Theory and History

Theory and History

An Interpretation of Social and
Economic Evolution

LUDWIG VON MlSES

Preface by Murray N. Rothbard

Lubwia
von Mises
Institute

AUBURN, ALABAMA

All rights reserved. Written permission must be secured from
the publisher to use or reproduce any part of this book, except
for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles.

Copyright © 1957 by Yale University Press
Reprinted in 1969 by Arlington House
Copyright © 1985 by Margit von Mises
Reprint in 2007 by the Ludwig von Mises Institute

Ludwig von Mises Institute, 518 West Magnolia Avenue,
Auburn, Alabama 36832 U.S.A.; www.mises.org

ISBN: 978-1-933550-19-0

Contents

Preface by Murray N. Rothbard xi

Introduction

1. Methodological Dualism 1

2. Economics and Metaphysics 3

3. Regularity and Prediction 4

4. The Concept of the Laws of Nature 5

5. The Limitations of Human Knowledge 8

6. Regularity and Choosing 9

7. Means and Ends 12

Part One
Value

Chapter 1. Judgments of Value

1. Judgments of Value and Propositions of Existence ... .19

2. Valuation and Action 20

3. The Subjectivity of Valuation 22

4. The Logical and Syntactical Structure

of Judgments of Value 23

Chapter 2. Knowledge and Value

1. The Bias Doctrine 26

2. Common Weal versus Special Interests 28

3. Economics and Value 32

4. Bias and Intolerance 34

Chapter 3. The Quest for Absolute Values

1. The Issue 35

2. Conflicts with Society 37

vi CONTENTS

3. A Remark on the Alleged Medieval Unanimity 42

4. The Idea of Natural Law 44

5. Revelation 49

6. Atheistic Intuition 50

7. The Idea of Justice 51

8. The Utilitarian Doctrine Restated 55

9. On Aesthetic Values 61

10. The Historical Significance of the Quest for

Absolute Values 63

Chapter 4. The Negation of Valuation

Part Two
Determinism and Materialism

Chapter 5. Determinism and Its Critics

1. Determinism 73

2. The Negation of Ideological Factors 75

3. The Free-Will Controversy 76

4. Foreordination and Fatalism 78

5. Determinism and Penology 82

6. Determinism and Statistics 84

7. The Autonomy of the Sciences of Human Action 92

Chapter 6. Materialism

1. Two Varieties of Materialism 94

2. The Secretion Analogy 97

3. The Political Implications of Materialism 99

Chapter 7. Dialectical Materialism

1. Dialectics and Marxism 102

2. The Material Productive Forces 106

CONTENTS vii

3. The Class Struggle 112

4. The Ideological Impregnation of Thought 122

5. The Conflict of Ideologies 130

6. Ideas and Interests 133

7. The Class Interests of the Bourgeoisie 142

8. The Critics of Marxism 147

9. Marxian Materialism and Socialism 155

Chapter 8. Philosophy of History

1. The Theme of History 159

2. The Theme of the Philosophy of History 162

3. The Difference between the Point of View of History

and That of Philosophy of History 166

4. Philosophy of History and the Idea of God 171

5. Activistic Determinism and Fatalistic Determinism . . .177

Part Three
Epistemological Problems of History

Chapter 9. The Concept of Historical Individuality

1. The Ultimate Given of History 183

2. The Role of the Individual in History 184

3. The Chimera of the Group Mind 188

4. Planning History 195

Chapter 10. Historicism

1. The Meaning of Historicism 198

2. The Rejection of Economics 205

3. The Quest for Laws of Historical Change 210

4. Historicist Relativism 214

5. Dissolving History 219

viii CONTENTS

6. Undoing History 227

7. Undoing Economic History 234

Chapter 11. The Challenge of Scientism

1. Positivism and Behaviorism 240

2. The Collectivist Dogma 250

3. The Concept of the Social Sciences 256

4. The Nature of Mass Phenomena 259

Chapter 12. Psychology and Thymology

1. Naturalistic Psychology and Thymology 264

2. Thymology and Praxeology 271

3. Thymology as a Historical Discipline 272

4. History and Fiction 274

5. Rationalization 280

6. Introspection 283

Chapter 13. Meaning and Use of the Study of History

1. The Why of History 285

2. The Historical Situation 286

3. History of the Remote Past 289

4. Falsifying History 291

5. History and Humanism 293

6. History and the Rise of Aggressive Nationalism 296

7. History and Judgments of Value 298

Chapter 14. The Epistemological Features of History

1. Prediction in the Natural Sciences 303

2. History and Prediction 305

3. The Specific Understanding of History 309

4. Thymological Experience 312

5. Real Types and Ideal Types 315

CONTENTS ix

Part Four
The Course of History

Chapter 15. Philosophical Interpretations of History

1. Philosophies of History and Philosophical
Interpretations of History 323

2. Environmentalism 324

3. The Egalitarians' Interpretation of History 326

4. The Racial Interpretation of History 332

5. The Secularism of Western Civilization 337

6. The Rejection of Capitalism by Antisecularism 340

Chapter 16. Present-Day Trends and the Future

1. The Reversal of the Trend toward Freedom 347

2. The Rise of the Ideology of Equality

in Wealth and Income 351

3. The Chimera of a Perfect State of Mankind 362

4. The Alleged Unbroken Trend toward Progress 367

5. The Suppression of "Economic" Freedom 370

6. The Uncertainty of the Future 378

Index 381

Preface

Ludwig von Mises published many books and articles
in his long and productive life, each of them making
important contributions to the theory and application
of economic science. But there stands out among them
four towering masterpieces, immortal monuments to
the work of the greatest economist and scientist of
human action of our century. The first, which estab-
lished Mises in the front rank of economists, was The
Theory of Money and Credit (1912), which for the first
time integrated the theory of money and the theory of
relative prices, and outlined his later theory of the
business cycle. Mises's second great work was Social-
ism (1922), which provided the definitive, comprehen-
sive critique of socialism and demonstrated that a
socialist order could not calculate economically. The
third was his stupendous treatise Human Action
(1949), which set forth an entire structure of econom-
ics and analysis of acting man. All three of these works
have made their mark in economics, and have been
featured in the "Austrian" revival that has flowered in
the United States over the past decade.

xii PREFACE

But Mises's fourth and last great work, Theory and
History (1957), has made remarkably little impact,
and has rarely been cited even by the young econo-
mists of the recent Austrian revival. It remains by far
the most neglected masterwork of Mises. And yet it
provides the philosophical backstop and elaboration of
the philosophy underlying Human Action. It is Mises's
great methodological work, explaining the basis of his
approach to economics, and providing scintillating cri-
tiques of such fallacious alternatives as historicism,
scientism, and Marxian dialectical materialism.

It might be thought that, despite its great impor-
tance, Theory and History has not made its mark
because, in this age of blind academic specialization,
economics will have nothing to do with anything that
smacks of the philosophic. Certainly, hyper-specializa-
tion plays a part, but in the last few years, interest in
methodology and the basic underpinnings of econom-
ics has blossomed, and one would think that at least
the specialists in this area would find much to discuss
and absorb in this book. And economists are surely not
so far gone in jargon and muddled writing that they
would fail to respond to Mises's lucid and sparkling
prose.

It is likely, instead, that the neglect of Theory and
History has more to do with the content of its philo-
sophical message. For while many people are aware of
the long and lone struggle that Ludwig von Mises
waged against statism and on behalf of laissez-faire,
few realize that there is far greater resistance in the
economics profession to Mises's methodology than

PREFACE xiii

there is to his politics. Adherence to the free market,
after all, is now not uncommon among economists
(albeit not with Mises's unerring consistency), but few
are ready to adopt the characteristically Austrian
method which Mises systematized and named "praxe-
ology."

At the heart of Mises and praxeology is the concept
with which he appropriately begins Theory and His-
tory, methodological dualism, the crucial insight that
human beings must be considered and analyzed in a
way and with a methodology that differs radically from
the analysis of stones, planets, atoms, or molecules.
Why? Because, quite simply, it is the essence of human
beings that they act, that they have goals and purposes,
and that they try to achieve those goals. Stones, atoms,
planets, have no goals or preferences; hence, they do
not choose among alternative courses of action. Atoms
and planets move, or are moved; they cannot choose,
select paths of action, or change their minds. Men and
women can and do. Therefore, atoms and stones can be
investigated, their courses charted, and their paths
plotted and predicted, at least in principle, to the
minutest quantitative detail. People cannot; every day,
people learn, adopt new values and goals, and change
their minds; people cannot be slotted and predicted as
can objects without minds or without the capacity to
learn and choose.

And now we can see why the economics profession
has put up such massive resistance to the basic
approach of Ludwig von Mises. For economics, like the
other social sciences in our century, has embraced the

xiv PREFACE

myth of what Mises has properly and scornfully
referred to as "scientism" — the idea that the only truly
"scientific" approach to the study of man is to ape the
approach of the physical sciences, in particular of its
most prestigious branch, physics. To become truly
"scientific" like physics and the other natural sciences,
then, economics must shun such concepts as purposes,
goals and learning; it must abandon man's mind and
write only of mere events. It must not talk of changing
one's mind, because it must claim that events are pre-
dictable, since, in the words of the original motto of
the Econometric Society, "Science is prediction." And
to become a "hard" or "real" science, economics must
treat individuals not as unique creatures, each with
his or her own goals and choices, but as homogenous
and therefore predictable bits of "data." One reason
orthodox economic theory has always had great diffi-
culty with the crucial concept of the entrepreneur is
that each entrepreneur is clearly and obviously
unique; and neoclassical economics cannot handle
individual uniqueness.

Furthermore, "real" science, it is alleged, must oper-
ate on some variant of positivism. Thus, in physics, the
scientist is confronted with a number of homogeneous,
uniform bits of events, which can be investigated for
quantitative regularities and constants, e.g., the rate at
which objects fall to earth. Then, the scientist frames
hypotheses to explain classes of behavior or motions,
and then deduces various propositions by which he can
"test" the theory by checking with hard, empirical
fact, with these observable bits of events. (Thus, the

PREFACE xv

theory of relativity can be tested by checking certain
empirically observable features of an eclipse.) In the
Old Positivist variant, he "verifies" the theory by this
empirical check; in the more nihilistic neopositivism
of Karl Popper, he can only "falsify" or "not falsify" a
theory in this manner. In any case, his theories must
always be held tentatively, and can never, at least not
officially, be embraced as definitively true; for he may
always find that other, alternative theories may be
able to explain wider classes of facts, that some new
facts may run counter to, or falsify, the theory. The sci-
entist must always wear at least the mask of humility
and open-mindedness.

But it was part of the genius of Ludwig von Mises
to see that sound economics has never proceeded in
this way, and to elaborate the good reasons for this
curious fact. There has been much unnecessary confu-
sion over Mises 's rather idiosyncratic use of the term
a priori, and the enthusiasts for modern scientific
methods have been able to use it to dismiss him as a
mere unscientific mystic. Mises saw that students of
human action are at once in better and in worse, and
certainly in different, shape from students of natural
science. The physical scientist looks at homogenous
bits of events, and gropes his way toward finding and
testing explanatory or causal theories for those empir-
ical events. But in human history, we, as human
beings ourselves, are in a position to know the cause of
events already; namely, the primordial fact that
human beings have goals and purposes and act to

xvi PREFACE

attain them. And this fact is known not tentatively
and hesitantly, but absolutely and apodictically.

One example that Mises liked to use in his class to
demonstrate the difference between two fundamental
ways of approaching human behavior was in looking at
Grand Central Station behavior during rush hour. The
"objective" or "truly scientific" behaviorist, he pointed
out, would observe the empirical events: e.g., people
rushing back and forth, aimlessly at certain predictable
times of day. And that is all he would know. But the
true student of human action would start from the fact
that all human behavior is purposive, and he would see
the purpose is to get from home to the train to work in
the morning, the opposite at night, etc. It is obvious
which one would discover and know more about human
behavior, and therefore which one would be the gen-
uine "scientist."

It is from this axiom, the fact of purposive human
action, that all of economic theory is deduced; eco-
nomics explores the logical implications of the perva-
sive fact of action. And since we know absolutely that
human action is purposive, we know with equal cer-
tainty the conclusions at each step of the logical chain.
There is no need to "test" this theory, if indeed that
concept has much sense in this context.

Is the fact of human purposive action "verifiable"?
Is it "empirical"? Yes, but certainly not in the precise,
or quantitative way that the imitators of physics are
used to. The empiricism is broad and qualitative,
stemming from the essence of human experience; it

PREFACE xvii

has nothing to do with statistics or historical events.
Furthermore, it is dependent on the fact that we are
all human beings and can therefore use this knowledge
to apply it to others of the same species. Still less is the
axiom of purposive action "falsifiable." It is so evident,
once mentioned and considered, that it clearly forms
the very marrow of our experience in the world.

It is just as well that economic theory does not need
"testing," for it is impossible to test it in any way by
checking its propositions against homogeneous bits of
uniform events. For there are no such events. The use
of statistics and quantitative data may try to mask this
fact, but their seeming precision is only grounded on
historical events that are not homogeneous in any
sense. Each historical event is a complex, unique
resultant of many causal factors. Since it is unique, it
cannot be used for a positivistic test, and since it is
unique it cannot be combined with other events in the
form of statistical correlations and achieve any mean-
ingful result. In analyzing the business cycle, for
example, it is not legitimate to treat each cycle as
strictly homogeneous to every other, and therefore to
add, multiply, manipulate, and correlate data. To aver-
age two time series, for example, and to proudly pro-
claim that Series X has an average four-month lead
compared to Series Y at some phase of the cycle, means
next to nothing. For (a) no particular time series may
even have the four-month lead-lag, and the lags may
and will range widely; and (b) the average of any past
series has no relevance to the data of the future, which

xviii PREFACE

will have its own ultimately unpredictable differences
from the previous cycles.

By demolishing the attempted use of statistics to
frame or test theory, Ludwig von Mises has been
accused of being a pure theorist with no interest in or
respect for history. On the contrary, and this is the cen-
tral theme of Theory and History, it is the positivists
and behaviorists who lack respect for the unique his-
torical fact by trying to compress these complex his-
torical events into the Procrustean mold of move-
ments of atoms or planets. In human affairs, the com-
plex historical event itself needs to be explained by
various theories as far as possible; but it can never be
completely or precisely determined by any theory. The
embarrassing fact that the forecasts of would-be eco-
nomic sooth-sayers have always faced an abysmal
record, especially the ones that pretend to quantitative
precision, is met in mainstream economics by the
determination to fine-tune the model once more and
try again. It is above all Ludwig von Mises who recog-
nizes the freedom, of mind and of choice, at the irre-
ducible heart of the human condition, and who realizes
therefore that the scientific urge to determinism and
complete predictability is a search for the impossible —
and is therefore profoundly unscientific.

Among some younger Austrians, an unwillingness
to challenge the prevailing methodological orthodoxy
has led to either the outright adoption of positivism or
else the abandonment of theory altogether on behalf of

PREFACE xix

a vaguely empirical institutionalism. Immersion in
Theory and History would help both groups to realize
that true theory is not divorced from the world of real,
acting man, and that one can abandon scientistic
myths while still using the apparatus of deductive the-
ory.

Austrian economics will never enjoy a genuine ren-
aissance until economists read and absorb the vital les-
sons of this unfortunately neglected work. Without
praxeology no economics can be truly Austrian or truly
sound.

Murray N. Rothbard
New York City, 1985

Introduction

1. Methodological Dualism

Mortal man does not know how the universe and all
that it contains may appear to a superhuman intelli-
gence. Perhaps such an exalted mind is in a position to
elaborate a coherent and comprehensive monistic inter-
pretation of all phenomena. Man — up to now, at least
— has always gone lamentably amiss in his attempts to
bridge the gulf that he sees yawning between mind and
matter, between the rider and the horse, between the
mason and the stone. It would be preposterous to view
this failure as a sufficient demonstration of the sound-
ness of a dualistic philosophy. All that we can infer
from it is that science — at least for the time being —
must adopt a dualistic approach, less as a philosophical
explanation than as a methodological device.

Methodological dualism refrains from any proposi-
tion concerning essences and metaphysical constructs.
It merely takes into account the fact that we do not
know how external events — physical, chemical, and
physiological — affect human thoughts, ideas, and judg-
ments of value. This ignorance splits the realm of
knowledge into two separate fields, the realm of exter-
nal events, commonly called nature, and the realm of
human thought and action.

Older ages looked upon the issue from a moral or

2 INTRODUCTION

religious point of view. Materialist monism was rejected
as incompatible with the Christian dualism of the Cre-
ator and the creation, and of the immortal soul and the
mortal body. Determinism was rejected as incompatible
with the fundamental principles of morality as well as
with the penal code. Most of what was advanced in
these controversies to support the respective dogmas
was unessential and is irrelevant from the methodologi-
cal point of view of our day. The determinists did little
more than repeat their thesis again and again, without
trying to substantiate it. The indeterminists denied their
adversaries' statements but were unable to strike at their
weak points. The long debates were not very helpful.
The scope of the controversy changed when the new
science of economics entered the scene. Political parties
which passionately rejected all the practical conclu-
sions to which the results of economic thought inevita-
bly lead, but were unable to raise any tenable objec-
tions against their truth and correctness, shifted the
argument to the fields of epistemology and method-
ology. They proclaimed the experimental methods of
the natural sciences to be the only adequate mode of
research, and induction from sensory experience the
only legitimate mode of scientific reasoning. They be-
haved as if they had never heard about the logical
problems involved in induction. Everything that was
neither experimentation nor induction was in their eyes
metaphysics, a term that they employed as synony-
mous with nonsense.

INTRODUCTION 3

2. Economics and Metaphysics

The sciences of human action start from the fact that
man purposefully aims at ends he has chosen. It is
precisely this that all brands of positivism, behaviorism,
and panphysicalism want either to deny altogether or
to pass over in silence. Now, it would simply be silly
to deny the fact that man manifestly behaves as if he
were really aiming at definite ends. Thus the denial of
purposefulness in man's attitudes can be sustained
only if one assumes that the choosing both of ends and
of means is merely apparent and that human behavior
is ultimately determined by physiological events which
can be fully described in the terminology of physics
and chemistry.

Even the most fanatical champions of the "Unified
Science" sect shrink from unambiguously espousing this
blunt formulation of their fundamental thesis. There
are good reasons for this reticence. So long as no defi-
nite relation is discovered between ideas and physical
or chemical events of which they would occur as the
regular sequel, the positivist thesis remains an epistemo-
logical postulate derived not from scientifically estab-
lished experience but from a metaphysical world view.

The positivists tell us that one day a new scientific
discipline will emerge which will make good their
promises and will describe in every detail the physical
and chemical processes that produce in the body of
man definite ideas. Let us not quarrel today about such
issues of the future. But it is evident that such a meta-

4 INTRODUCTION

physical proposition can in no way invalidate the re-
sults of the discursive reasoning of the sciences of hu-
man action. The positivists for emotional reasons do
not like the conclusions that acting man must neces-
sarily draw from the teachings of economics. As they
are not in a position to find any flaw either in the rea-
soning of economics or in the inferences derived from
it, they resort to metaphysical schemes in order to dis-
credit the epistemological foundations and the method-
ological approach of economics.

There is nothing vicious about metaphysics. Man
cannot do without it. The positivists are lamentably
wrong in employing the term "metaphysics" as a
synonym for nonsense. But no metaphysical proposition
must contradict any of the findings of discursive rea-
soning. Metaphysics is not science, and the appeal to
metaphysical notions is vain in the context of a logical
examination of scientific problems. This is true also of
the metaphysics of positivism, to which its supporters
have given the name of antimetaphysics.

3. Regularity and Prediction

Epistemologically the distinctive mark of what we
call nature is to be seen in the ascertainable and inevita-
ble regularity in the concatenation and sequence of phe-
nomena. On the other hand the distinctive mark of
what we call the human sphere or history or, better,
the realm of human action is the absence of such a
universally prevailing regularity. Under identical con-
ditions stones always react to the same stimuli in the

INTRODUCTION 5

same way; we can learn something about these regular
patterns of reacting, and we can make use of this knowl-
edge in directing our actions toward definite goals. Our
classification of natural objects and our assigning names
to these classes is an outcome of this cognition. A
stone is a thing that reacts in a definite way. Men re-
act to the same stimuli in different ways, and the same
man at different instants of time may react in ways
different from his previous or later conduct. It is im-
possible to group men into classes whose members al-
ways react in the same way.

This is not to say that future human actions are
totally unpredictable. They can, in a certain way, be
anticipated to some extent. But the methods applied
in such anticipations, and their scope, are logically and
epistemologically entirely different from those applied
in anticipating natural events, and from their scope.

4. The Concept of the Laws of Nature

Experience is always experience of past happenings.
It refers to what has been and is no longer, to events
sunk forever in the flux of time.

The awareness of regularity in the concatenation and
sequence of many phenomena does not affect this ref-
erence of experience to something that occurred once
in the past at a definite place and time under the cir-
cumstances prevailing there and then. The cognition
of regularity too refers exclusively to past events. The
most experience can teach us is: in all cases observed
in the past there was an ascertainable regularity.

6 INTRODUCTION

From time immemorial all men of all races and civili-
zations have taken it for granted that the regularity ob-
served in the past will also prevail in the future. The
category of causality and the idea that natural events
will in the future follow the same pattern they showed
in the past are fundamental principles of human
thought as well as of human action. Our material civili-
zation is the product of conduct guided by them. Any
doubt concerning their validity within the sphere of
past human action is dispelled by the results of tech-
nological designing. History teaches us irrefutably that
our forefathers and we ourselves up to this very mo-
ment have acted wisely in adopting them. They are true
in the sense that pragmatism attaches to the concept of
truth. They work, or, more precisely, they have worked
in the past.

Leaving aside the problem of causality with its meta-
physical implications, we have to realize that the nat-
ural sciences are based entirely on the assumption that
a regular conjunction of phenomena prevails in the
realm they investigate. They do not search merely for
frequent conjunction but for a regularity that prevailed
without exception in all cases observed in the past and
is expected to prevail in the same way in all cases to be
observed in the future. Where they can discover only a
frequent conjunction — as is often the case in biology,
for example — they assume that it is solely the inade-
quacy of our methods of inquiry that prevents us tem-
porarily from discovering strict regularity.

The two concepts of invariable and of frequent
conjunction must not be confused. In referring to in-

INTRODUCTION 7

variable conjunction people mean that no deviation
from the regular pattern — the law — of conjunction has
ever been observed and that they are certain, as far
as men can be certain about anything, that no such
deviation is possible and will ever happen. The best
elucidation of the idea of inexorable regularity in the
concatenation of natural phenomena is provided by the
concept of miracles. A miraculous event is something
that simply cannot happen in the normal course of
world affairs as we know it, because its happening could
not be accounted for by the laws of nature. If none-
theless the occurrence of such an event is reported, two
different interpretations are provided, both of which,
however, fully agree in taking for granted the inexo-
rability of the laws of nature. The devout say: "This
could not happen in the normal course of affairs. It
came to pass only because the Lord has the power to
act without being restricted by the laws of nature. It is
an event incomprehensible and inexplicable for the
human mind, it is a mystery, a miracle." The rationalists
say: "It could not happen and therefore it did not hap-
pen. The reporters were either liars or victims of a
delusion." If the concept of laws of nature were to
mean not inexorable regularity but merely frequent
connection, the notion of miracles would never have
been conceived. One would simply say: A is frequently
followed by B, but in some instances this effect failed
to appear.

Nobody says that stones thrown into the air at an
angle of 45 degrees will frequently fall down to earth
or that a human limb lost by an accident frequently

8 INTRODUCTION

does not grow again. All our thinking and all our ac-
tions are guided by the knowledge that in such cases
we are not faced with frequent repetition of the same
connection, but with regular repetition.

5. The Limitations of Human Knowledge

Human knowledge is conditioned by the power of
the human mind and by the extent of the sphere in
which objects evoke human sensations. Perhaps there
are in the universe things that our senses cannot per-
ceive and relations that our minds cannot comprehend.
There may also exist outside of the orbit we call the
universe other systems of things about which we can-
not learn anything because, for the time being, no traces
of their existence penetrate into our sphere in a way
that can modify our sensations. It may also be that
the regularity in the conjunction of natural phenomena
we are observing is not eternal but only passing, that
it prevails only in the present stage (which may last
millions of years ) of the history of the universe and may
one day be replaced by another arrangement.

Such and similar thoughts may induce in a conscien-
tious scientist the utmost caution in formulating the
results of his studies. It behooves the philosopher to be
still more restrained in dealing with the apriori cate-
gories of causality and the regularity in the sequence
of natural phenomena.

The apriori forms and categories of human thinking
and reasoning cannot be traced back to something of
which they would appear as the logically necessary

INTRODUCTION 9

conclusion. It is contradictory to expect that logic could
be of any service in demonstrating the correctness or
validity of the fundamental logical principles. All that
can be said about them is that to deny their correctness
or validity appears to the human mind nonsensical and
that thinking, guided by them, has led to modes of suc-
cessful acting.

Hume's skepticism was the reaction to a postulate
of absolute certainty that is forever unattainable to
man. Those divines who saw that nothing but revela-
tion could provide man with perfect certainty were
right. Human scientific inquiry cannot proceed beyond
the limits drawn by the insufficiency of man's senses
and the narrowness of his mind. There is no deductive
demonstration possible of the principle of causality and
of the ampliative inference of imperfect induction;
there is only recourse to the no less indemonstrable
statement that there is a strict regularity in the conjunc-
tion of all natural phenomena. If we were not to refer
to this uniformity, all the statements of the natural
sciences would appear to be hasty generalizations.

6. Regularity and Choosing

The main fact about human action is that in regard
to it there is no such regularity in the conjunction of
phenomena. It is not a shortcoming of the sciences of
human action that they have not succeeded in discover-
ing determinate stimulus-response patterns. What does
not exist cannot be discovered.

If there were no regularity in nature, it would be

10 INTRODUCTION

impossible to assert anything with regard to the be-
havior of classes of objects. One would have to study
the individual cases and to combine what one has
learned about them into a historical account.

Let us, for the sake of argument, assume that all
those physical quantities that we call constants are
in fact continually changing and that the inadequacy
of our methods of inquiry alone prevents us from be-
coming aware of these slow changes. We do not take
account of them because they have no perceptible in-
fluence upon our conditions and do not noticeably affect
the outcome of our actions. Therefore one could say
that these quantities established by the experimental
natural sciences may fairly be looked upon as constants
since they remain unchanged during a period of time
that by far exceeds the ages for which we may plan
to provide.

But it is not permissible to argue in an analogous way
with regard to the quantities we observe in the field of
human action. These quantities are manifestly variable.
Changes occurring in them plainly affect the result of
our actions. Every quantity that we can observe is a
historical event, a fact which cannot be fully described
without specifying the time and geographical point.

The econometrician is unable to disprove this fact,
which cuts the ground from under his reasoning. He
cannot help admitting that there are no "behavior con-
stants." Nonetheless he wants to introduce some num-
bers, arbitrarily chosen on the basis of a historical fact,
as "unknown behavior constants." The sole excuse he
advances is that his hypotheses are "saying only that

INTRODUCTION 11

these unknown numbers remain reasonably constant
through a period of years." 1 Now whether such a
period of supposed constancy of a definite number is
still lasting or whether a change in the number has al-
ready occurred can only be established later on. In
retrospect it may be possible, although in rare cases
only, to declare that over a (probably rather short)
period an approximately stable ratio — which the econo-
metrician chooses to call a "reasonably" constant ratio
— prevailed between the numerical values of two fac-
tors. But this is something fundamentally different from
the constants of physics. It is the assertion of a historical
fact, not of a constant that can be resorted to in at-
tempts to predict future events.

Leaving aside for the present any reference to the
problem of the human will or free will, we may say:
Nonhuman entities react according to regular patterns;
man chooses. Man chooses first ultimate ends and then
the means to attain them. These acts of choosing are
determined by thoughts and ideas about which, at least
for the time being, the natural sciences do not know
how to give us any information.

In the mathematical treatment of physics the dis-
tinction between constants and variables makes sense;
it is essential in every instance of technological compu-
tation. In economics there are no constant relations be-
tween various magnitudes. Consequently all ascertain-
able data are variables, or what amounts to the same

1. See the Cowles Commission for Research in Economics, Report
for Period, January 1, 1948-June 30, 1949 (University of Chicago),
p. 7.

12 INTRODUCTION

thing, historical data. The mathematical economists
reiterate that the plight of mathematical economics
consists in the fact that there are a great number of
variables. The truth is that there are only variables
and no constants. It is pointless to talk of variables
where there are no invariables.

7. Means and Ends

To choose is to pick one out of two or more possible
modes of conduct and to set aside the alternatives.
Whenever a human being is in a situation in which
various modes of behavior, precluding one another, are
open to him, he chooses. Thus life implies an endless
sequence of acts of choosing. Action is conduct directed
by choices.

The mental acts that determine the content of a
choice refer either to ultimate ends or to the means to
attain ultimate ends. The former are called judgments
of value. The latter are technical decisions derived from
factual propositions.

In the strict sense of the term, acting man aims only
at one ultimate end, at the attainment of a state of
affairs that suits him better than the alternatives.
Philosophers and economists describe this undeniable
fact by declaring that man prefers what makes him
happier to what makes him less happy, that he aims at
happiness. 1 Happiness — in the purely formal sense in

1. There is no need to refute anew the arguments advanced for
more than two thousand years against the principles of eudaemonism,
hedonism, and utilitarianism. For an exposition of the formal and sub-

INTRODUCTION 13

which ethical theory applies the term — is the only
ultimate end, and all other things and states of affairs
sought are merely means to the realization of the
supreme ultimate end. It is customary, however, to
employ a less precise mode of expression, frequently
assigning the name of ultimate ends to all those means
that are fit to produce satisfaction directly and imme-
diately.

The characteristic mark of ultimate ends is that they
depend entirely on each individual's personal and sub-
jective judgment, which cannot be examined, measured,
still less corrected by any other person. Each individual
is the only and final arbiter in matters concerning his
own satisfaction and happiness.

As this fundamental cognition is often considered to
be incompatible with the Christian doctrine, it may be
proper to illustrate its truth by examples drawn from
the early history of the Christian creed. The martyrs
rejected what others considered supreme delights, in
order to win salvation and eternal bliss. They did not
heed their well-meaning fellows who exhorted them
to save their lives by bowing to the statue of the divine
emperor, but chose to die for their cause rather than to
preserve their lives by forfeiting everlasting happiness
in heaven. What arguments could a man bring for-

jectivistic character of the concepts "pleasure" and "pain" as em-
ployed in the context of these doctrines, see Mises, Human Action
(New Haven, Yale University Press, 1949, pp. 14-15), and Ludwig
Feuerbach, Eudarnonismus, in Sammtliche Werke, ed. Bolin and Jodl
(Stuttgart, 1907), 10, 230-93. Of course, those who recognize no
"happiness" but that given by the orgasm, alcohol, and so forth con-
tinue to repeat the old errors and distortions.

14 INTRODUCTION

ward who wanted to dissuade his fellow from martyr-
dom? He could try to undermine the spiritual founda-
tions of his faith in the message of the Gospels and their
interpretation by the Church. This would have been an
attempt to shake the Christian's confidence in the ef-
ficacy of his religion as a means to attain salvation and
bliss. If this failed, further argument could avail noth-
ing, for what remained was the decision between two
ultimate ends, the choice between eternal bliss and
eternal damnation. Then martyrdom appeared the
means to attain an end which in the martyr's opinion
warranted supreme and everlasting happiness.

As soon as people venture to question and to examine
an end, they no longer look upon it as an end but
deal with it as a means to attain a still higher end. The
ultimate end is beyond any rational examination. All
other ends are but provisional. They turn into means
as soon as they are weighed against other ends or
means.

Means are judged and appreciated according to
their ability to produce definite effects. While judg-
ments of value are personal, subjective, and final, judg-
ments about means are essentially inferences drawn
from factual propositions concerning the power of the
means in question to produce definite effects. About
the power of a means to produce a definite effect there
can be dissension and dispute between men. For the
evaluation of ultimate ends there is no interpersonal
standard available.

Choosing means is a technical problem, as it were,

INTRODUCTION 15

the term "technique" being taken in its broadest sense.
Choosing ultimate ends is a personal, subjective, indi-
vidual affair. Choosing means is a matter of reason,
choosing ultimate ends a matter of the soul and the will.

PART ONE. VALUE

Chapter 1. Judgments of Value

1. Judgments of Value and Propositions of Existence

Propositions asserting existence (affirmative existen-
tial propositions) or nonexistence (negative existential
propositions) are descriptive. They assert something
about the state of the whole universe or of parts of the
universe. With regard to them questions of truth and
falsity are significant. They must not be confounded
with judgments of value.

Judgments of value are voluntaristic. They express
feelings, tastes, or preferences of the individual who
utters them. With regard to them there cannot be any
question of truth and falsity. They are ultimate and not
subject to any proof or evidence.

Judgments of value are mental acts of the individual
concerned. As such they must be sharply distinguished
from the sentences by means of which an individual
tries to inform other people about the content of his
judgments of value. A man may have some reason to lie
about his valuations. We may describe this state of
affairs in the following way: Every judgment of value
is in itself also a fact of the actual state of the universe
and as such may be the topic of existential propositions.
The sentence "I prefer Beethoven to Lehar" refers to a
judgment of value. If looked upon as an existential
proposition, it is true if I really prefer Beethoven and

id

20 VALUE

act accordingly and false if I in fact prefer Lehar and
for some reasons lie about my real feelings, taste, or
preferences. In an analogous way the existential propo-
sition "Paul prefers Beethoven to Lehar" may be true
or false. In declaring that with regard to a judgment of
value there cannot be any question of truth or falsity,
we refer to the judgment as such and not to the sen-
tences communicating the content of such a judgment
of value to other people.

2. Valuation and Action

A judgment of value is purely academic if it does not
impel the man who utters it to any action. There are
judgments which must remain academic because it is
beyond the power of the individual to embark upon
any action directed by them. A man may prefer a starry
sky to the starless sky, but he cannot attempt to substi-
tute the former state which he likes better for the latter
he likes less.

The significance of value judgments consists pre-
cisely in the fact that they are the springs of human
action. Guided by his valuations, man is intent upon
substituting conditions that please him better for con-
ditions which he deems less satisfactory. He employs
means in order to attain ends sought.

Hence the history of human affairs has to deal with
the judgments of value that impelled men to act and
directed their conduct. What happened in history can-
not be discovered and narrated without referring to
the various valuations of the aeting individuals. It is

JUDGMENTS OF VALUE 21

not the task of the historian qua historian to pass judg-
ments of value on the individuals whose conduct is the
theme of his inquiries. As a branch of knowledge his-
tory utters existential propositions only. But these exis-
tential propositions often refer to the presence or ab-
sence of definite judgments of value in the minds of the
acting individuals. It is one of the tasks of the specific
understanding of the historical sciences to establish
what content the value judgments of the acting indi-
viduals had.

It is a task of history, for example, to trace back the
origin of India's caste system to the values which
prompted the conduct of the generations who devel-
oped, perfected, and preserved it. It is its further task
to discover what the consequences of this system were
and how these effects influenced the value judgments of
later generations. But it is not the business of the his-
torian to pass judgments of value on the system as such,
to praise or to condemn it. He has to deal with its rele-
vance for the course of affairs, he has to compare it
with the designs and intentions of its authors and sup-
porters and to depict its effects and consequences. He
has to ask whether or not the means employed were fit
to attain the ends the acting individuals sought.

It is a fact that hardly any historian has fully avoided
passing judgments of value. But such judgments are
always merely incidental to the genuine tasks of history.
In uttering them the author speaks as an individual
judging from the point of view of his personal valua-
tions, not as a historian.

22 VALUE

3. The Subjectivity of Valuation

All judgments of value are personal and subjective.
There are no judgments of value other than those as-
serting I prefer, I like better, I wish.

It cannot be denied by anybody that various individ-
uals disagree widely with regard to their feelings,
tastes, and preferences and that even the same indi-
viduals at various instants of their lives value the same
things in a different way. In view of this fact it is use-
less to talk about absolute and eternal values.

This does not mean that every individual draws his
valuations from his own mind. The immense majority
of people take their valuations from the social environ-
ment into which they were born, in which they grew
up, that moulded their personality and educated them.
Few men have the power to deviate from the traditional
set of values and to establish their own scale of what
appears to be better and what appears to be worse.

What the theorem of the subjectivity of valuation
means is that there is no standard available which
would enable us to reject any ultimate judgment of
value as wrong, false, or erroneous in the way we can
reject an existential proposition as manifestly false. It
is vain to argue about ultimate judgments of value as
we argue about the truth or falsity of an existential
proposition. As soon as we start to refute by arguments
an ultimate judgment of value, we look upon it as a
means to attain definite ends. But then we merely shift
the discussion to another plane. We no longer view the

JUDGMENTS OF VALUE 23

principle concerned as an ultimate value but as a means
to attain an ultimate value, and we are again faced with
the same problem. We may, for instance, try to show a
Buddhist that to act in conformity with the teachings
of his creed results in effects which we consider disas-
trous. But we are silenced if he replies that these effects
are in his opinion lesser evils or no evils at all compared
to what would result from nonobservance of his rules
of conduct. His ideas about the supreme good, happi-
ness, and eternal bliss are different from ours. He does
not care for those values his critics are concerned with,
and seeks for satisfaction in other things than they do.

4. The Logical and Syntactical Structure of
Judgments of Value

A judgment of value looks upon things from the
point of view of the man who utters it. It does not as-
sert anything about things as they are. It manifests a
man's affective response to definite conditions of the
universe as compared with other definite conditions.

Value is not intrinsic. It is not in things and condi-
tions but in the valuing subject. It is impossible to
ascribe value to one thing or state of affairs only. Val-
uation invariably compares one thing or condition with
another thing or condition. It grades various states of
the external world. It contrasts one thing or state,
whether real or imagined, with another thing or state,
whether real or imagined, and arranges both in a scale
of what the author of the judgment likes better and
what less.

24 VALUE

It may happen that the judging individual considers
both things or conditions envisaged as equal. He is not
concerned whether there is A or B. Then his judgment
of value expresses indifference. No action can result
from such a neutral disposition.

Sometimes the utterance of a judgment of value is
elliptical and makes sense only if appropriately com-
pleted by the hearer. "I don't like measles" means "I
prefer the absence of measles to its presence." Such
incompleteness is the mark of all references to freedom.
Freedom invariably means freedom from (absence of)
something referred to expressly or implicitly. The gram-
matical form of such judgments may be qualified as
negative. But it is vain to deduce from this idiomatic
attire of a class of judgments of value any statements
about their content and to blame them for an alleged
negativism. Every judgment of value allows of a formu-
lation in which the more highly valued thing or state
is logically expressed in both a positive and a negative
way, although sometimes a language may not have de-
veloped the appropriate term. Freedom of the press im-
plies the rejection or negation of censorship. But, stated
explicitly, it means a state of affairs in which the author
alone determines the content of his publication as dis-
tinct from a state in which the police has a right to
interfere in the matter.

Action necessarily involves the renunciation of some-
thing to which a lower value is assigned in order to
attain or to preserve something to which a higher value
is assigned. Thus, for instance, a definite amount of lei-
sure is renounced in order to reap the product of a defi-

JUDGMENTS OF VALUE 25

nite amount of labor. The renunciation of leisure is the
means to attain a more highly valued thing or state.

There are men whose nerves are so sensitive that they
cannot endure an unvarnished account of many facts
about the physiological nature of the human body and
the praxeological character of human action. Such peo-
ple take offense at the statement that man must choose
between the most sublime things, the loftiest human
ideals, on the one hand, and the wants of his body on
the other. They feel that such statements detract from
the nobility of the higher things. They refuse to notice
the fact that there arise in the life of man situations in
which he is forced to choose between fidelity to lofty
ideals and such animal urges as feeding.

Whenever man is faced with the necessity of choos-
ing between two things or states, his decision is a
judgment of value no matter whether or not it is ut-
tered in the grammatical form commonly employed in
expressing such judgments.

Chapter 2. Knowledge and Value

1. The Bias Doctrine

The accusation of bias has been leveled against
economists long before Mane integrated it into his doc-
trines. Today it is fairly generally endorsed by writers
and politicians who, although they are in many respects
influenced by Marxian ideas, cannot simply be consid-
ered Marxians. We must attach to their reproach a
meaning that differs from that which it has in the con-
text of dialectical materialism. We must therefore dis-
tinguish two varieties of the bias doctrine: the Marxian
and the non-Marxian. The former will be dealt with in
later parts of this essay in a critical analysis of Marxian
materialism. The latter alone is treated in this chapter.
Upholders of both varieties of the bias doctrine rec-
ognize that their position would be extremely weak if
they were merely to blame economics for an alleged
bias without charging all other branches of science with
the same fault. Hence they generalize the bias doctrine
— but this generalized doctrine we need not examine
here. We may concentrate upon its core, the assertion
that economics is necessarily not wertfrei but is tainted
by prepossessions and prejudices rooted in value judg-
ments. For all arguments advanced to support the doc-
trine of general bias are also resorted to in the endeav-
ors to prove the special bias doctrine that refers to

26

KNOWLEDGE AND VALUE 27

economics, while some of the arguments brought for-
ward in favor of the special bias doctrine are manifestly
inapplicable to the general doctrine.

Some contemporary defenders of the bias doctrine
have tried to link it with Freudian ideas. They contend
that the bias they see in the economists is not conscious
bias. The writers in question are not aware of their
prejudgments and do not intentionally seek results that
will justify their foregone conclusions. From the deep
recesses of the subconscious, suppressed wishes, un-
known to the thinkers themselves, exert a disturbing in-
fluence on their reasoning and direct their cogitations
toward results that agree with their repressed desires
and urges.

However, it does not matter which variety of the bias
doctrine one endorses. Each of them is open to the same
objections.

For the reference to bias, whether intentional or sub-
conscious, is out of place if the accuser is not in a posi-
tion to demonstrate clearly in what the deficiency of
the doctrine concerned consists. All that counts is
whether a doctrine is sound or unsound. This is to be
established by discursive reasoning. It does not in the
least detract from the soundness and correctness of a
theory if the psychological forces that prompted its
author are disclosed. The motives that guided the
thinker are immaterial to appreciating his achieve-
ment. Biographers are busy today explaining the work
of the genius as a product of his complexes and libidi-
nous impulses and a sublimation of his sexual desires.
Their studies may be valuable contributions to psychol-

28 VALUE

ogy, or rather to thymology (see below p. 265), but
they do not affect in any way the evaluation of the biog-
raphee's exploits. The most sophisticated psychoana-
lytical examination of Pascal's life tells us nothing about
the scientific soundness or unsoundness of his mathe-
matical and philosophical doctrines.

If the failures and errors of a doctrine are unmasked
by discursive reasoning, historians and biographers may
try to explain them by tracing them back to their au-
thor's bias. But if no tenable objections can be raised
against a theory, it is immaterial what kind of motives
inspired its author. Granted that he was biased. But
then we must realize that his alleged bias produced
theorems which successfully withstood all objections.

Reference to a thinker s bias is no substitute for a
refutation of his doctrines by tenable arguments. Those
who charge the economists with bias merely show that
they are at a loss to refute their teachings by critical
analysis.

2. Common Weal versus Special Interests

Economic policies are directed toward the attain-
ment of definite ends. In dealing with them economics
does not question the value attached to these ends by
acting men. It merely investigates two points: First,
whether or not the policies concerned are fit to attain
the ends which those recommending and applying them
want to attain. Secondly, whether these policies do not
perhaps produce effects which, from the point of view

KNOWLEDGE AND VALUE 29

of those recommending and applying them, are unde-
sirable.

It is true that the terms in which many economists,
especially those of the older generations, expressed the
result of their inquiries could easily be misinterpreted.
In dealing with a definite policy they adopted a manner
of speech which would have been adequate from the
point of view of those who considered resorting to it in
order to attain definite ends. Precisely because the
economists were not biased and did not venture to
question the acting men's choice of ends, they pre-
sented the result of their deliberation in a mode of ex-
pression which took the valuations of the actors for
granted. People aim at definite ends when resorting to
a tariff or decreeing minimum wage rates. When the
economists thought such policies would attain the ends
sought by their supporters, they called them good — just
as a physician calls a certain therapy good because he
takes the end — curing his patient — for granted.

One of the most famous of the theorems developed
by the Classical economists, Ricardo's theory of com-
parative costs, is safe against all criticism, if we may
judge by the fact that hundreds of passionate adver-
saries over a period of a hundred and forty years have
failed to advance any tenable argument against it. It is
much more than merely a theory dealing with the ef-
fects of free trade and protection. It is a proposition
about the fundamental principles of human coopera-
tion under the division of labor and specialization and
the integration of vocational groups, about the origin

30 VALUE

and further intensification of social bonds between men,
and should as such be called the law of association. It
is indispensable for understanding the origin of civili-
zation and the course of history. Contrary to popular
conceptions, it does not say that free trade is good and
protection bad. It merely demonstrates that protection
is not a means to increase the supply of goods pro-
duced. Thus it says nothing about protection's suita-
bility or unsuitability to attain other ends, for instance
to improve a nation's chance of defending its independ-
ence in war.

Those charging the economists with bias refer to
their alleged eagerness to serve "the interests." In the
context of their accusation this refers to selfish pursuit
of the well-being of special groups to the prejudice of
the common weal. Now it must be remembered that
the idea of the common weal in the sense of a harmony
of the interests of all members of society is a modern
idea and that it owes its origin precisely to the teach-
ings of the Classical economists. Older generations be-
lieved that there is an irreconcilable conflict of interests
among men and among groups of men. The gain of one
is invariably the damage of others; no man profits but
by the loss of others. We may call this tenet the Mon-
taigne dogma because in modern times it was first
expounded by Montaigne. It was the essence of the
teachings of Mercantilism and the main target of the
Classical economists' critique of Mercantilism, to which
they opposed their doctrine of the harmony of the
rightly understood or long-run interests of all members
of a market society. The socialists and interventionists

KNOWLEDGE AND VALUE 31

reject the doctrine of the harmony of interests. The
socialists declare that there is irreconcilable conflict
among the interests of the various social classes of a
nation; while the interests of the proletarians demand
the substitution of socialism for capitalism, those of the
exploiters demand the preservation of capitalism. The
nationalists declare that the interests of the various
nations are irreconcilably in conflict.

It is obvious that the antagonism of such incompati-
ble doctrines can be resolved only by logical reasoning.
But the opponents of the harmony doctrine are not
prepared to submit their views to such examination.
As soon as somebody criticizes their arguments and
tries to prove the harmony doctrine they cry out bias.
The mere fact that only they and not their adversaries,
the supporters of the harmony doctrine, raise this se-
proach of bias shows clearly that they are unable to
reject their opponents' statements by ratiocination.
They engage in the examination of the problems con-
cerned with the prepossession that only biased apolo-
gists of sinister interests can possibly contest the cor-
rectness of their socialist or interventionist dogmas. In
their eyes the mere fact that a man disagrees with their
ideas is the proof of his bias.

When carried to its ultimate logical consequences
this attitude implies the doctrine of polylogism. Poly-
logism denies the uniformity of the logical structure of
the human mind. Every social class, every nation, race,
or period of history is equipped with a logic that differs
from the logic of other classes, nations, races, or ages.
Hence bourgeois economics differs from proletarian

32 VALUE

economics, German physics from the physics of other
nations, Aryan mathematics from Semitic mathematics.
There is no need to examine here the essentials of the
various brands of polylogism. 1 For polylogism never
went beyond the simple declaration that a diversity of
the mind's logical structure exists. It never pointed out
in what these differences consist, for instance how the
logic of the proletarians differs from that of the bour-
geois. All the champions of polylogism did was to reject
definite statements by referring to unspecified peculi-
arities of their author's logic.

3. Economics and Value

The main argument of the Classical harmony doc-
trine starts from the distinction between interests in the
short run and those in the long run, the latter being
referred to as the rightly understood interests. Let us
examine the bearing of this distinction upon the prob-
lem of privileges.

One group of men certainly gains by a privilege
granted to them. A group of producers protected by
a tariff, a subsidy, or any other modern protectionist
method against the competition of more efficient rivals
gains at the expense of the consumers. But will the rest
of the nation, taxpayers and buyers of the protected
article, tolerate the privilege of a minority? They will
only acquiesce in it if they themselves are benefited by
an analogous privilege. Then everybody loses as much
in his capacity as consumer as he wins in his capacity

1. See Mises, Human Action, pp. 74r-89.

KNOWLEDGE AND VALUE 33

as producer. Moreover all are harmed by the substitu-
tion of less efficient for more efficient methods of pro-
duction.

If one deals with economic policies from the point
of view of this distinction between long- and short-run
interests, there is no ground for charging the economist
with bias. He does not condemn featherbedding of the
railroadmen because it benefits the railroadmen at the
expense of other groups whom he likes better. He shows
that the railroadmen cannot prevent featherbedding
from becoming a general practice and that then, that
is, in the long run, it hurts them no less than other
people.

Of course, the objections the economists advanced to
the plans of the socialists and interventionists cany no
weight with those who do not approve of the ends
which the peoples of Western civilization take for
granted. Those who prefer penury and slavery to mate-
rial well-being and all that can only develop where
there is material well-being may deem all these objec-
tions irrelevant. But the economists have repeatedly
emphasized that they deal with socialism and interven-
tionism from the point of view of the generally ac-
cepted values of Western civilization. The socialists
and interventionists not only have not — at least not
openly — denied these values but have emphatically de-
clared that the realization of their own program will
achieve them much better than will capitalism.

It is true that most socialists and many intervention-
ists attach value to equalizing the standard of living of
all individuals. But the economists did not question the

34 VALUE

value judgment implied. All they did was to point out
the inevitable consequences of equalization. They did
not say: The end you are aiming at is bad; they said:
Realization of this end will bring effects which you
yourselves deem more undesirable than inequality.

4. Bias and Intolerance

It is obvious that there are many people who let their
reasoning be influenced by judgments of value, and that
bias often corrupts the thinking of men. What is to be
rejected is the popular doctrine that it is impossible to
deal with economic problems without bias and that
mere reference to bias, without unmasking fallacies in
the chain of reasoning, is sufficient to explode a theory.

The emergence of the bias doctrine implies in fact
categorical acknowledgment of the impregnability of
the teachings of economics against which the reproach
of bias has been leveled. It was the first stage in the re-
turn to intolerance and persecution of dissenters which
is one of the main features of our age. As dissenters are
guilty of bias, it is right to "liquidate" them.

Chapter 3. The Quest for Absolute Values

1. The Issue

In dealing with judgments of value we refer to facts,
that is, to the way in which people really choose ulti-
mate ends. While the value judgments of many people
are identical, while it is permissible to speak of certain
almost universally accepted valuations, it would be
manifestly contrary to fact to deny that there is diver-
sity in passing judgments of value.

From time immemorial an immense majority of men
have agreed in preferring the effects produced by
peaceful cooperation — at least among a limited number
of people — to the effects of a hypothetical isolation of
each individual and a hypothetical war of all against
all. To the state of nature they have preferred the state
of civilization, for they sought the closest possible at-
tainment of certain ends — the preservation of life and
health — which, as they rightly thought, require social
cooperation. But it is a fact that there have been and
are also men who have rejected these values and conse-
quently preferred the solitary life of an anchorite to life
within society.

It is thus obvious that any scientific treatment of the
problems of value judgments must take into full account
the fact that these judgments are subjective and chang-
ing. Science seeks to know what is, and to formulate

35

36 VALUE

existential propositions describing the universe as it is.
With regard to judgments of value it cannot assert more
than that they are uttered by some people, and inquire
what the effects of action guided by them must be. Any
step beyond these limits is tantamount to substituting
a personal judgment of value for knowledge of reality.
Science and our organized body of knowledge teach
only what is, not what ought to be.

This distinction between a field of science dealing
exclusively with existential propositions and a field of
judgments of value has been rejected by the doctrines
that maintain there are eternal absolute values which
it is just as much the task of scientific or philosophical
inquiry to discover as to discover the laws of physics.
The supporters of these doctrines contend that there is
an absolute hierarchy of values. They tried to define
the supreme good. They said it is permissible and nec-
essary to distinguish in the same way between true and
false, correct and incorrect judgments of value as be-
tween true and false, correct and incorrect existential
propositions. 1 Science is not restricted to the description
of what is. There is, in their opinion, another fully le-
gitimate branch of science, the normative science of
ethics, whose task it is to show the true absolute values
and to set up norms for the correct conduct of men.

The plight of our age, according to the supporters of
this philosophy, is that people no longer acknowledge
these eternal values and do not let their actions be
guided by them. Conditions were much better in the

1. Franz Brentano, Vom Urtprung stttlicher Erkenntnis, 2d ed.
Leipzig, 1921.

THE QUEST FOR ABSOLUTE VALUES 37

past, when the peoples of Western civilization were
unanimous in endorsing the values of Christian ethics.
In what follows, we will deal with the issues raised
by this philosophy.

2. Conflicts within Society

Having discussed the fact that men disagree with
regard to their judgments of value and their choice of
ultimate ends, we must stress that many conflicts
which are commonly considered valuational are ac-
tually caused by disagreement concerning the choice
of the best means to attain ends about which the con-
flicting parties agree. The problem of the suitability or
unsuitability of definite means is to be solved by exis-
tential propositions, not by judgments of value. Its
treatment is the main topic of applied science.

It is thus necessary to be aware in dealing with con-
troversies concerning human conduct whether the dis-
agreement refers to the choice of ends or to that of
means. This is often a difficult task. For the same things
are ends to some people, means to others.

With the exception of the small, almost negligible
number of consistent anchorites, all people agree in
considering some kind of social cooperation between
men the foremost means to attain any ends they may
aim at. This undeniable fact provides a common ground
on which political discussions between men become
possible. The spiritual and intellectual unity of all speci-
mens of homo sapiens manifests itself in the fact that
the immense majority of men consider the same thing

38 VALUE

— social cooperation — the best means of satisfying the
biological urge, present in every living being, to pre-
serve the life and health of the individual and to propa-
gate the species.

It is permissible to call this almost universal accept-
ance of social cooperation a natural phenomenon. In
resorting to this mode of expression and asserting that
conscious association is in conformity with human
nature, one implies that man is characterized as man
by reason, is thus enabled to become aware of the great
principle of cosmic becoming and evolution, viz., dif-
ferentiation and integration, and to make intentional
use of this principle to improve his condition. But one
must not consider cooperation among the individuals
of a biological species a universal natural phenomenon.
The means of sustenance are scarce for every species of
living beings. Hence biological competition prevails
among the members of all species, an irreconcilable
conflict of vital "interests." Only a part of those who
come into existence can survive. Some perish because
others of their own species have snatched away from
them the means of sustenance. An implacable struggle
for existence goes on among the members of each spe-
cies precisely because they are of the same species and
compete with other members of it for the same scarce
opportunities of survival and reproduction. Man alone
by dint of his reason substituted social cooperation for
biological competition. What made social cooperation
possible is, of course, a natural phenomenon, the higher
productivity of labor accomplished under the principle
of the division of labor and specialization of tasks. But

THE QUEST FOR ABSOLUTE VALUES 39

it was necessary to discover this principle, to compre-
hend its bearing upon human affairs, and to employ it
consciously as a means in the struggle for existence.

The fundamental facts about social cooperation have
been misinterpreted by the school of social Darwinism
as well as by many of its critics. The former maintained
that war among men is an inevitable phenomenon and
that all attempts to bring about lasting peace among
nations are contrary to nature. The latter retorted that
the struggle for existence is not among members of the
same animal species but among the members of various
species. As a rule tigers do not attack other tigers but,
taking the line of least resistance, weaker animals.
Hence, they concluded, war among men, who are speci-
mens of the same species, is unnatural. 1

Both schools misunderstood the Darwinian concept
of the struggle for survival. It does not refer merely to
combat and blows. It means metaphorically the tena-
cious impulse of beings to keep alive in spite of all
factors detrimental to them. As the means of sustenance
are scarce, biological competition prevails among all in-
dividuals — whether of the same or different species —
which feed on the same stuff. It is immaterial whether
or not tigers fight one another. What makes every speci-
men of an animal species a deadly foe of every other
specimen is the mere fact of their life-and-death rivalry
in their endeavors to snatch a sufficient amount of food.
This inexorable rivalry is present also among animals
gregariously roaming in droves and flocks, among ants

1. On this controversy see Paul Barth, Die Philosophic der Ge-
achichte ah Soziologie (4th ed. Leipzig, 1922), pp. 289-92.

40 VALUE

of the same hill and bees of the same swarm, among
the brood hatched by common parents and among the
seeds ripened by the same plant. Only man has the
power to escape to some extent from the rule of this
law by intentional cooperation. So long as there is social
cooperation and population has not increased beyond
the optimum size, biological competition is suspended.
It is therefore inappropriate to refer to animals and
plants in dealing with the social problems of man.

Yet man's almost universal acknowledgment of the
principle of social cooperation did not result in agree-
ment regarding all interhuman relations. While almost
all men agree in looking upon social cooperation as the
foremost means for realizing all human ends, whatever
they may be, they disagree as to the extent to which
peaceful social cooperation is a suitable means for at-
taining their ends and how far it should be resorted to.

Those whom we may call the harmonists base their
argument on Ricardo's law of association and on
Malthus' principle of population. They do not, as some
of their critics believe, assume that all men are bio-
logically equal. They take fully into account the fact
that there are innate biological differences among var-
ious groups of men as well as among individuals belong-
ing to the same group. Ricardo's law has shown that
cooperation under the principle of the division of labor
is favorable to all participants. It is an advantage for
every man to cooperate with other men, even if these
others are in every respect — mental and bodily capac-
ities and skills, diligence and moral worth — inferior.
From Malthus' principle one can deduce that there is,

THE QUEST FOR ABSOLUTE VALUES 41

in any given state of the supply of capital goods and
knowledge of how to make the best use of natural
resources, an optimum size of population. So long as
population has not increased beyond this size, the addi-
tion of newcomers improves rather than impairs the
conditions of those already cooperating.

In the philosophy of the antiharmonists, the various
schools of nationalism and racism, two different lines
of reasoning must be distinguished. One is the doctrine
of the irreconcilable antagonism prevailing among var-
ious groups, such as nations or races. As the antihar-
monists see it, community of interests exists only within
the group among its members. The interests of each
group and of each of its members are implacably op-
posed to those of all other groups and of each of their
members. So it is "natural" there should be perpetual
war among various groups. This natural state of war of
each group against every other group may sometimes
be interrupted by periods of armistice, falsely labeled
periods of peace. It may also happen that sometimes in
warfare a group cooperates in alliances with other
groups. Such alliances are temporary makeshifts of
politics. They do not in the long run affect the inexo-
rable natural conflict of interests. Having, in coopera-
tion with some allied groups, defeated several of the
hostile groups, the leading group in the coalition turns
against its previous allies in order to annihilate them too
and to establish its own world supremacy.

The second dogma of the nationalist and racist phi-
losophies is considered by its supporters a logical con-
clusion derived from their first dogma. As they see it,

42 VALUE

human conditions involve forever irreconcilable con-
flicts, first among the various groups fighting one an-
other, later, after the final victory of the master group,
between the latter and the enslaved rest of mankind.
Hence this supreme elite group must always be ready
to fight, first to crush the rival groups, then to quell re-
bellions of the slaves. The state of perpetual prepared-
ness for war enjoins upon it the necessity of organizing
society after the pattern of an army. The army is not
an instrument destined to serve a body politic; it is
rather the very essence of social cooperation, to which
all other social institutions are subservient. The individ-
uals are not citizens of a commonwealth; they are sol-
diers of a fighting force and as such bound to obey
unconditionally the orders issued by the supreme com-
mander. They have no civil rights, merely military
duties.

Thus even the fact that the immense majority of men
look upon social cooperation as the foremost means to
attain all desired ends does not provide a basis for a
wide-reaching agreement concerning either ends or
means.

3. A Remark on the Alleged Medieval Unanimity

In examining the doctrines of eternal absolute values
we must also ask whether it is true or not that there was
a period of history in which all peoples of the West
were united in their acceptance of a uniform system
of ethical norms.

Until the beginning of the fourth century the Chris-

THE QUEST FOR ABSOLUTE VALUES 43

tian creed was spread by voluntary conversions. There
were also later voluntary conversions of individuals and
of whole peoples. But from the days of Theodosius I
on, the sword began to play a prominent role in the dis-
semination of Christianity. Pagans and heretics were
compelled by force of arms to submit to the Christian
teachings. For many centuries religious problems were
decided by the outcome of battles and wars. Military
campaigns determined the religious allegiance of na-
tions. Christians of the East were forced to accept the
creed of Mohammed, and pagans in Europe and Amer-
ica were forced to accept the Christian faith. Secular
power was instrumental in the struggle between the
Reformation and the Counter Reformation.

There was religious uniformity in Europe of the
Middle Ages as both paganism and heresies were eradi-
cated with fire and sword. All of Western and Central
Europe recognized the Pope as the Vicar of Christ. But
this did not mean that all people agreed in their judg-
ments of value and in the principles directing their
conduct. There were few people in medieval Europe
who lived according to the precepts of the Gospels.
Much has been said and written about the truly Chris-
tian spirit of the code of chivalry and about the reli-
gious idealism that guided the conduct of the knights.
Yet anything less compatible with Luke 6:27-9 than
the rules of chivalry can hardly be conceived. The gal-
lant knights certainly did not love their enemies, they
did not bless those who cursed them, and they did not
offer the left cheek to him who smote them on the right
cheek. The Catholic Church had the power to prevent

44 VALUE

scholars and writers from challenging the dogmas as
defined by the Pope and the Councils and to force the
secular rulers to yield to some of its political claims.
But it could preserve its position only by condoning
conduct on the part of the laity which defied most, if
not all, of the principles of the Gospels. The values that
determined the actions of the ruling classes were en-
tirely different from those that the Church preached.
Neither did the peasants comply with Matthew 6:25-8.
And there were courts and judges in defiance of Mat-
thew 7:1: "Judge not, that you be not judged."

4. The Idea of Natural Law

The most momentous attempt to find an absolute and
eternal standard of value is presented by the doctrine
of natural law.

The term "natural law" has been claimed by various
schools of philosophy and jurisprudence. Many doc-
trines have appealed to nature in order to provide a
justification for their postulates. Many manifestly spuri-
ous theses have been advanced under the label of natu-
ral law. It was not difficult to explode the fallacies com-
mon to most of these lines of thought. And it is no
wonder that many thinkers become suspicious as soon
as natural law is referred to.

Yet it would be a serious blunder to ignore the fact
that all the varieties of the doctrine contained a sound
idea which could neither be compromised by connec-
tion with untenable vagaries nor discredited by any
criticism. Long before the Classical economists discov-

THE QUEST FOR ABSOLUTE VALUES 45

ered that a regularity in the sequence of phenomena
prevails in the field of human action, the champions of
natural law were dimly aware of this inescapable fact.
From the bewildering diversity of doctrines presented
under the rubric of natural law there finally emerged a
set of theorems which no caviling can ever invalidate.
There is first the idea that a nature-given order of
things exists to which man must adjust his actions if he
wants to succeed. Second: the only means available to
man for the cognizance of this order is thinking and
reasoning, and no existing social institution is exempt
from being examined and appraised by discursive rea-
soning. Third: there is no standard available for ap-
praising any mode of acting either of individuals or of
groups of individuals but that of the effects produced
by such action. Carried to its ultimate logical conse-
quences, the idea of natural law led eventually to ra-
tionalism and utilitarianism.

The march of social philosophy toward this ines-
capable conclusion was slowed down by many obstacles
which could not be removed easily. There were nu-
merous pitfalls on the way, and many inhibitions ham-
pered the philosophers. To deal with the vicissitudes of
the evolution of these doctrines is a task of the history
of philosophy. In the context of our investigation it is
enough to mention only two of these problems.

There was the antagonism between the teachings of
reason and the dogmas of the Church. Some philoso-
phers were prepared to ascribe unconditional suprem-
acy to the latter. Truth and certainty, they declared,
are to be found only in revelation. Man's reason can

46 VALUE

err, and man can never be sure that his speculations
were not led astray by Satan. Other thinkers did not
accept this solution of the antagonism. To reject reason
beforehand was in their opinion preposterous. Reason
too stems from God, who endowed man with it, so there
can be no genuine contradiction between dogma and
the correct teachings of reason. It is the task of philoso-
phy to show that ultimately both agree. The central
problem of Scholastic philosophy was to demonstrate
that human reason, unaided by revelation and Holy
Writ, taking recourse only to its proper methods of
ratiocination, is capable of proving the apodictic truth
of the revealed dogmas. 1 A genuine conflict of faith and
reason does not exist. Natural law and divine law do
not disagree.

However, this way of dealing with the matter does
not remove the antagonism; it merely shifts it to an-
other field. The conflict is no longer a conflict between
faith and reason but between Thomist philosophy and
other modes of philosophizing. We may leave aside the
genuine dogmas such as Creation, Incarnation, the
Trinity, as they have no direct bearing on the problems
of interhuman relations. But many issues remain with
regard to which most, if not all, Christian churches and
denominations are not prepared to yield to secular rea-
soning and an evaluation from the point of view of
social utility. Thus the recognition of natural law on the
part of Christian theology was only conditional. It
referred to a definite type of natural law, not opposed

1. Louis Rougier, La Scholastique et le Thomisme (Paris, 1925),
pp. 102-5, 116-17, 460-562.

THE QUEST FOR ABSOLUTE VALUES 47

to the teachings of Christ as each of these churches and
denominations interpreted them. It did not acknowl-
edge the supremacy of reason. It was incompatible with
the principles of utilitarian philosophy.

A second factor that obstructed the evolution of
natural law toward a consistent and comprehensive
system of human action was the erroneous theory of
the biological equality of all men. In repudiating argu-
ments advanced in favor of legal discrimination among
men and of a status society, many advocates of equality
before the law overstepped the mark. To hold that "at
birth human infants, regardless of their heredity, are
as equal as Fords" 2 is to deny facts so obvious that it
brought the whole philosophy of natural law into dis-
repute. In insisting on biological equality the natural
law doctrine pushed aside all the sound arguments ad-
vanced in favor of the principle of equality before the
law. It thus opened the way for the spread of theories
advocating all sorts of legal discrimination against in-
dividuals and groups of individuals. It supplanted the
teachings of liberal social philosophy. Stirring up hatred
and violence, foreign wars and domestic revolutions, it
prepared mankind for the acceptance of aggressive na-
tionalism and racism.

The chief accomplishment of the natural law idea
was its rejection of the doctrine (sometimes called legal
positivism) according to which the ultimate source of
statute law is to be seen in the superior military power
of the legislator who is in a position to beat into sub-

2. Horace M. Kallen, "Behaviorism," Encyclopaedia of the Social
Sciences ( Macmillan, 1930-35), 3, 498.

48 VALUE

mission all those defying his ordinances. Natural law
taught that statutory laws can be bad laws, and it
contrasted with the bad laws the good laws to which
it ascribed divine or natural origin. But it was an illu-
sion to deny that the best system of laws cannot be
put into practice unless supported and enforced by
military supremacy. The philosophers shut their eyes
to manifest historical facts. They refused to admit that
the causes they considered just made progress only
because their partisans defeated the defenders of the
bad causes. The Christian faith owes it success to a
long series of victorious battles and campaigns, from
various battles between rival Roman imperators and
caesars down to the campaigns that opened the Orient
to the activities of missionaries. The cause of American
independence triumphed because the British forces
were defeated by the insurgents and the French. It
is a sad truth that Mars is for the big battalions, not
for the good causes. To maintain the opposite opinion
implies the belief that the outcome of an armed con-
flict is an ordeal by combat in which Cod always grants
victory to the champions of the just cause. But such an
assumption would annul all the essentials of the doc-
trine of natural law, whose basic idea was to contrast to
the positive laws, promulgated and enforced by those
in power, a "higher" law grounded in the innermost na-
ture of man.

Yet all these deficiencies and contradictions of the
doctrine of natural law must not prevent us from rec-
ognizing its sound nucleus. Hidden in a heap of illusions
and quite arbitrary prepossessions was the idea that

THE QUEST FOR ABSOLUTE VALUES 49

every valid law of a country was open to critical exam-
ination by reason. About the standard to be applied
in such an examination the older representatives of the
school had only vague notions. They referred to nature
and were reluctant to admit that the ultimate standard
of good and bad must be found in the effects produced
by a law. Utilitarianism finally completed the intellec-
tual evolution inaugurated by the Greek Sophists.

But neither utilitarianism nor any of the varieties of
the doctrine of natural law could or did find a way to
eliminate the conflict of antagonistic judgments of
value. It is useless to emphasize that nature is the ulti-
mate arbiter of what is right and what is wrong. Nature
does not clearly reveal its plans and intentions to man.
Thus the appeal to natural law does not settle the dis-
pute. It merely substitutes dissent concerning the inter-
pretation of natural law for dissenting judgments of
value. Utilitarianism, on the other hand, does not deal
at all with ultimate ends and judgments of value. It
invariably refers only to means.

5. Revelation

Revealed religion derives its authority and authen-
ticity from the communication to man of the Supreme
Being's will. It gives the faithful indisputable certainty.

However, people disagree widely about the content
of revealed truth as well as about its correct — orthodox
— interpretation. For all the grandeur, majesty, and sub-
limity of religious feeling, irreconcilable conflict exists
among various faiths and creeds. Even if unanimity

50 VALUE

could be attained in matters of the historical authentic-
ity and reliability of revelation, the problem of the ve-
racity of various exegetic interpretations would still
remain.

Every faith claims to possess absolute certainty. But
no religious faction knows of any peaceful means that
will invariably induce dissenters to divest themselves
voluntarily of their error and to adopt the true creed.

If people of different faiths meet for peaceful discus-
sion of their differences, they can find no common basis
for their colloquy but the statement: by their fruits ye
shall know them. Yet this utilitarian device is of no use
so long as men disagree about the standard to be ap-
plied in judging the effects.

The religious appeal to absolute eternal values did
not do away with conflicting judgments of value. It
merely resulted in religious wars.

6. Atheistic Intuition

Other attempts to discover an absolute standard of
values were made without reference to a divine real-
ity. Emphatically rejecting all traditional religions and
claiming for their teachings the epithet "scientific,"
various writers tried to substitute a new faith for the
old ones. They claimed to know precisely what the
mysterious power that directs all cosmic becoming has
in store for mankind. They proclaimed an absolute
standard of values. Good is what works along the lines
that this power wants mankind to follow; everything
else is bad. In their vocabulary "progressive" is a

THE QUEST FOR ABSOLUTE VALUES 51

synonym of good and "reactionary" a synonym of bad.
Inevitably progress will triumph over reaction because
it is impossible for men to divert the course of history
from the direction prescribed by the plan of the mys-
terious prime mover. Such is the metaphysics of Karl
Marx, the faith of contemporary self-styled progres-
sivism.

Marxism is a revolutionary doctrine. It expressly
declares that the design of the prime mover will be
accomplished by civil war. It implies that ultimately
in the battles of these campaigns the just cause, that
is, the cause of progress, must conquer. Then all con-
flicts concerning judgments of value will disappear. The
liquidation of all dissenters will establish the undis-
puted supremacy of the absolute eternal values.

This formula for the solution of conflicts of value
judgments is certainly not new. It is a device known
and practiced from time immemorial. Kill the infidels!
Burn the heretics! What is new is merely the fact that
today it is sold to the public under the label of "science."

7. The Idea of Justice

One of the motives that impel men to search for an
absolute and immutable standard of value is the pre-
sumption that peaceful cooperation is possible only
among people guided by the same judgments of value.

It is obvious that social cooperation would not have
evolved and could not be preserved if the immense
majority were not to consider it as the means for the
attainment of all their ends. Striving after the preserva-

52 VALUE

tion of his own life and health and after the best pos-
sible removal of felt uneasiness, the individual looks
upon society as a means, not as an end. There is no
perfect unanimity even with regard to this point. But
we may neglect the dissent of the ascetics and the an-
chorites, not because they are few, but because their
plans are not affected if other people, in the pursuit of
their plans, cooperate in society.

There prevails among the members of society dis-
agreement with regard to the best method for its
organization. But this is a dissent concerning means,
not ultimate ends. The problems involved can be dis-
cussed without any reference to judgments of value.

Of course, almost all people, guided by the tradi-
tional manner of dealing with ethical precepts, peremp-
torily repudiate such an explanation of the issue. Social
institutions, they assert, must be just. It is base to judge
them merely according to their fitness to attain definite
ends, however desirable these ends may be from any
other point of view. What matters first is justice. The
extreme formulation of this idea is to be found in the
famous phrase: fiat fustitia, per eat mundus. Let justice
be done, even if it destroys the world. Most supporters
of the postulate of justice will reject this maxim as ex-
travagant, absurd, and paradoxical. But it is not more
absurd, merely more shocking, than any other reference
to an arbitrary notion of absolute justice. It clearly
shows the fallacies of the methods applied in the dis-
cipline of intuitive ethics.

The procedure of this normative quasi science is to
derive certain precepts from intuition and to deal with

THE QUEST FOR ABSOLUTE VALUES 53

them as if their adoption as a guide to action would not
affect the attainment of any other ends considered de-
sirable. The moralists do not bother about the necessary
consequences of the realization of their postulates. We
need not discuss the attitudes of people for whom the
appeal to justice is manifestly a pretext, consciously or
subconsciously chosen, to disguise their short-run in-
terests, nor expose the hypocrisy of such makeshift
notions of justice as those involved in the popular con-
cepts of just prices and fair wages. 1 The philosophers
who in their treatises of ethics assigned supreme value
to justice and applied the yardstick of justice to all
social institutions were not guilty of such deceit. They
did not support selfish group concerns by declaring
them alone just, fair, and good, and smear all dissenters
by depicting them as the apologists of unfair causes.
They were Platonists who believed that a perennial
idea of absolute justice exists and that it is the duty of
man to organize all human institutions in conformity
with this ideal. Cognition of justice is imparted to man
by an inner voice, i.e., by intuition. The champions of
this doctrine did not ask what the consequences of
realizing the schemes they called just would be. They
silently assumed either that these consequences will be
beneficial or that mankind is bound to put up even with
very painful consequences of justice. Still less did these
teachers of morality pay attention to the fact that peo-
ple can and really do disagree with regard to the inter-
pretation of the inner voice and that no method of
peacefully settling such disagreements can be found.

1. See Mises, Human Action, pp. 719-25.

54 VALUE

All these ethical doctrines have failed to comprehend
that there is, outside of social bonds and preceding,
temporally or logically, the existence of society, nothing
to which the epithet "just" can be given. A hypothetical
isolated individual must under the pressure of biolog-
ical competition look upon all other people as deadly
foes. His only concern is to preserve his own life and
health; he does not need to heed the consequences
which his own survival has for other men; he has no use
for justice. His only solicitudes are hygiene and defense.
But in social cooperation with other men the individual
is forced to abstain from conduct incompatible with
life in society. Only then does the distinction between
what is just and what is unjust emerge. It invariably
refers to interhuman social relations. What is beneficial
to the individual without affecting his fellows, such as
the observance of certain rules in the use of some drugs,
remains hygiene.

The ultimate yardstick of justice is conduciveness to
the preservation of social cooperation. Conduct suited
to preserve social cooperation is just, conduct detri-
mental to the preservation of society is unjust. There
cannot be any question of organizing society according
to the postulates of an arbitrary preconceived idea of
justice. The problem is to organize society for the best
possible realization of those ends which men want to
attain by social cooperation. Social utility is the only
standard of justice. It is the sole guide of legislation.

Thus there are no irreconcilable conflicts between
selfishness and altruism, between economics and ethics,
between the concerns of the individual and those of so-

THE QUEST FOR ABSOLUTE VALUES 55

ciety. Utilitarian philosophy and its finest product, eco-
nomics, reduced these apparent antagonisms to the
opposition of short-run and long-run interests. Society
could not have come into existence or been preserved
without a harmony of the rightly understood interests
of all its members.

There is only one way of dealing with all problems
of social organization and the conduct of the members
of society, viz., the method applied by praxeology and
economics. No other method can contribute anything to
the elucidation of these matters.

The concept of justice as employed by jurisprudence
refers to legality, that is, to legitimacy from the point
of view of the valid statutes of a country. It means jus-
tice de lege lata. The science of law has nothing to say
de lege ferenda, i.e., about the laws as they ought to be.
To enact new laws and to repeal old laws is the task of
the legislature, whose sole criterion is social utility. The
assistance the legislator can expect from lawyers refers
only to matters of legal technique, not to the gist of
the statutes and decrees.

There is no such thing as a normative science, a sci-
ence of what ought to be.

8. The Utilitarian Doctrine Restated

The essential teachings of utilitarian philosophy as
applied to the problems of society can be restated as
follows:

Human effort exerted under the principle of the divi-
sion of labor in social cooperation achieves, other things

56 VALUE

remaining equal, a greater output per unit of input
than the isolated efforts of solitary individuals. Man's
reason is capable of recognizing this fact and of adapt-
ing his conduct accordingly. Thus social cooperation
becomes for almost every man the great means for the
attainment of all ends. An eminently human common
interest, the preservation and intensification of social
bonds, is substituted for pitiless biological competition,
the significant mark of animal and plant life. Man be-
comes a social being. He is no longer forced by the in-
evitable laws of nature to look upon all other specimens
of his animal species as deadly foes. Other people be-
come his fellows. For animals the generation of every
new member of the species means the appearance of a
new rival in the struggle for life. For man, until the
optimum size of population is reached, it means rather
an improvement than a deterioration in his quest for
material well-being.

Notwithstanding all his social achievements man
remains in biological structure a mammal. His most
urgent needs are nourishment, warmth, and shelter.
Only when these wants are satisfied can he concern
himself with other needs, peculiar to the human species
and therefore called specifically human or higher needs.
Also the satisfaction of these depends as a rule, at least
to some extent, on the availability of various material
tangible things.

As social cooperation is for acting man a means and
not an end, no unanimity with regard to value judg-
ments is required to make it work. It is a fact that almost
all men agree in aiming at certain ends, at those pleas-

THE QUEST FOR ABSOLUTE VALUES 57

ures which ivory-tower moralists disdain as base and
shabby. But it is no less a fact that even the most sub-
lime ends cannot be sought by people who have not first
satisfied the wants of their animal body. The loftiest
exploits of philosophy, art, and literature would never
have been performed by men living outside of society.

Moralists praise the nobility of people who seek a
thing for its own sake. "Deutsch sein heisst eine Sache
um ihrer selbst willen tun," declared Richard Wagner, 1
and the Nazis, of all people, adopted the dictum as a
fundamental principle of their creed. Now what is
sought as an ultimate end is valued according to the im-
mediate satisfaction to be derived from its attainment.
There is no harm in declaring elliptically that it is
sought for its own sake. Then Wagner's phrase is re-
duced to the truism: Ultimate ends are ends and not
means for the attainment of other ends.

Moralists furthermore level against utilitarianism the
charge of ( ethical ) materialism. Here too they miscon-
strue the utilitarian doctrine. Its gist is the cognition
that action pursues definite chosen ends and that conse-
quently there can be no other standard for appraising
conduct but the desirability or undesirability of its
effects. The precepts of ethics are designed to preserve,
not to destroy, the "world." They may call upon people
to put up with undesirable short-run effects in order
to avoid producing still more undesirable long-run
effects. But they must never recommend actions whose
effects they themselves deem undesirable for the sole

1. In Deutsche Kunst und Deutsche Politik, Samtliche Werke (6th
ed. Leipzig, Breitkopf and Hartel), 8, 96.

58 VALUE

purpose of not defying an arbitrary rule derived from
intuition. The formula fiat justitia, pereat mundus is
exploded as sheer nonsense. An ethical doctrine that
does not take into full account the effects of action is
mere fancy.

Utilitarianism does not teach that people should
strive only after sensuous pleasure (though it recog-
nizes that most or at least many people behave in this
way). Neither does it indulge in judgments of value. By
its recognition that social cooperation is for the im-
mense majority a means for attaining all their ends, it
dispels the notion that society, the state, the nation, or
any other social entity is an ultimate end and that in-
dividual men are the slaves of that entity. It rejects the
philosophies of universalism, collectivism, and totali-
tarianism. In this sense it is meaningful to call utili-
tarianism a philosophy of individualism.

The collectivist doctrine fails to recognize that social
cooperation is for man a means for the attainment of all
his ends. It assumes that irreconcilable conflict prevails
between the interests of the collective and those of in-
dividuals, and in this conflict it sides unconditionally
with the collective entity. The collective alone has real
existence; the individuals' existence is conditioned by
that of the collective. The collective is perfect and can
do no wrong. Individuals are wretched and refractory;
their obstinacy must be curbed by the authority to
which God or nature has entrusted the conduct of
society's affairs. The powers that be, says the Apostle
Paul, are ordained of God. 2 They are ordained by nature

2. Epistle to the Romans 13:1.

THE QUEST FOB ABSOLUTE VALVES 59

or by the superhuman factor that directs the course of
all cosmic events, says the atheist collectivist.

Two questions immediately arise. First: If it were
true that the interests of the collective and those of in-
dividuals are implacably opposed to one another, how
could society function? One may assume that the in-
dividuals would be prevented by force of arms from re-
sorting to open rebellion. But it cannot be assumed that
their active cooperation could be secured by mere com-
pulsion. A system of production in which the only in-
centive to work is the fear of punishment cannot last.
It was this fact that made slavery disappear as a sys-
tem of managing production.

Second: If the collective is not a means by which in-
dividuals may achieve their ends, if the collective's
flowering requires sacrifices by the individuals which
are not outweighed by advantages derived from social
cooperation, what prompts the advocate of collectivism
to assign to the concerns of the collective precedence
over the personal wishes of the individuals? Can any
argument be advanced for such exaltation of the collec-
tive but personal judgments of value?

Of course, everybody's judgments of value are per-
sonal. If a man assigns a higher value to the concerns
of a collective than to his other concerns, and acts ac-
cordingly, that is his affair. So long as the collectivist
philosophers proceed in this way, no objection can be
raised. But they argue differently. They elevate their
personal judgments of value to the dignity of an absolute
standard of value. They urge other people to stop valu-
ing according to their own will and to adopt uncondi-

60 VALUE

tionally the precepts to which collectivism has assigned
absolute eternal validity.

The futility and arbitrariness of the collectivist point
of view become still more evident when one recalls that
various collectivist parties compete for the exclusive
allegiance of the individuals. Even if they employ the
same word for their collectivist ideal, various writers
and leaders disagree on the essential features of the
thing they have in mind. The state which Ferdinand
Lassalle called god and to which he assigned para-
mountcy was not precisely the collectivist idol of Hegel
and Stahl, the state of the Hohenzollern. Is mankind as
a whole the sole legitimate collective or is each of the
various nations? Is the collective to which the German-
speaking Swiss owe exclusive allegiance the Swiss Con-
federacy or the Volksgemeinschaft comprising all Ger-
man-speaking men? All major social entities such as
nations, linguistic groups, religious communities, party
organizations have been elevated to the dignity of the
supreme collective that overshadows all other collec-
tives and claims the submission of the whole personality
of all right-thinking men. But an individual can re-
nounce autonomous action and unconditionally sur-
render his self only in favor of one collective. Which
collective this ought to be can be determined only by
a quite arbitrary decision. The collective creed is by
necessity exclusive and totalitarian. It craves the whole
man and does not want to share him with any other col-
lective. It seeks to establish the exclusive supreme
validity of only one system of values.

There is, of course, but one way to make one's own

THE QUEST FOR ABSOLUTE VALUES 61

judgments of value supreme. One must beat into sub-
mission all those dissenting. This is what all representa-
tives of the various collectivist doctrines are striving for.
They ultimately recommend the use of violence and
pitiless annihilation of all those whom they condemn as
heretics. Collectivism is a doctrine of war, intolerance,
and persecution. If any of the collectivist creeds should
succeed in its endeavors, all people but the great dicta-
tor would be deprived of their essential human quality.
They would become mere soulless pawns in the hands
of a monster.

The characteristic feature of a free society is that it
can function in spite of the fact that its members dis-
agree in many judgments of value. In the market
economy business serves not only the majority but also
various minorities, provided they are not too small in
respect of the economic goods which satisfying their
special wishes would require. Philosophical treatises
are published — though few people read them, and the
masses prefer other books or none — if enough readers
are foreseen to recover the costs.

9. On Aesthetic Values

The quest for absolute standards of value was not
limited to the field of ethics. It concerned aesthetic
values as well.

In ethics a common ground for the choice of rules of
conduct is given so far as people agree in considering
the preservation of social cooperation the foremost
means for attaining all their ends. Thus virtually any

62 VALUE

controversy concerning the rules of conduct refers to
means and not to ends. It is consequently possible to
appraise these rules from the point of view of their
adequacy for the peaceful functioning of society. Even
rigid supporters of an intuitionist ethics could not help
eventually resorting to an appraisal of conduct from the
point of view of its effects upon human happiness. 1

It is different with aesthetic judgments of value. In
this field there is no such agreement as prevails with
regard to the insight that social cooperation is the fore-
most means for the attainment of all ends. All disagree-
ment here invariably concerns judgments of value, none
the choice of means for the realization of an end agreed
upon. There is no way to reconcile conflicting judg-
ments. There is no standard by which a verdict of "it
pleases me" or "it does not please me" can be rectified.

The unfortunate propensity to hypostatize various
aspects of human thinking and acting has led to at-
tempts to provide a definition of beauty and then to
apply this arbitrary concept as a measure. However
there is no acceptable definition of beauty but "that
which pleases." There are no norms of beauty, and there
is no such thing as a normative discipline of aesthetics.
All that a professional critic of art and literature can say
apart from historical and technical observations is that
he likes or dislikes a work. The work may stir him to
profound commentaries and disquisitions. But his judg-
ments of value remain personal and subjective and do

1. Even Kant. See Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, Pt. I, Bk. II,
Sec. I ( Insel-Ausgabe, 5, 240-1 ) . Compare Friedrich Jodl, Geschichte
der Ethik (2d ed. Stuttgart, 1912), 2, 35-8.

THE QUEST FOR ABSOLUTE VALUES 63

not necessarily affect the judgments of other people. A
discerning person will note with interest what a thought-
ful writer says about the impression a work of art made
upon him. But it depends upon a man's own discretion
whether or not he will let his own judgment be influ-
enced by that of other men, however excellent they may
be.

The enjoyment of art and literature presupposes a
certain disposition and susceptibility on the part of the
public. Taste is inborn to only a few. Others must culti-
vate their aptitude for enjoyment. There are many
things a man must learn and experience in order to be-
come a connoisseur. But however a man may shine as
a well-informed expert, his judgments of value remain
personal and subjective. The most eminent critics and,
for that matter, also the most noted writers, poets and
artists widely disagreed in their appreciation of the most
famous masterpieces.

Only stilted pedants can conceive the idea that there
are absolute norms to tell what is beautiful and what is
not. They try to derive from the works of the past a code
of rules with which, as they fancy, the writers and
artists of the future should comply. But the genius does
not cooperate with the pundit.

10. The Historical Significance of the Quest
for Absolute Values

The value controversy is not a scholastic quarrel of
interest only to hair-splitting dons. It touches upon the
vital issues of human life.

64 VALUE

The world view that was displaced by modem ration-
alism did not tolerate dissenting judgments of value.
The mere fact of dissent was considered an insolent
provocation, a mortal outrage to one's own feelings. Pro-
tracted religious wars resulted.

Although some intolerance, bigotry, and lust for per-
secution is still left in religious matters, it is unlikely
that religious passion will kindle wars in the near future.
The aggressive spirit of our age stems from another
source, from endeavors to make the state totalitarian
and to deprive the individual of autonomy.

It is true that the supporters of socialist and inter-
ventionist programs recommend them only as means to
attain ends which they have in common with all other
members of society. They hold that a society organized
according to their principles will best supply people
with those material goods they toil to acquire. What
more desirable societal state of affairs can be thought
of than that "higher phase of communist society" in
which, as Marx told us, society will give "to each ac-
cording to his needs"?

However, the socialists failed entirely in attempts to
prove their case. Marx was at a loss to refute the well-
founded objections that were raised even in his time
about the minor difficulties of the socialist schemes. It
was his helplessness in this regard that prompted him to
develop the three fundamental doctrines of his dog-
matism. 1 When economics later demonstrated why a
socialist order, necessarily lacking any method of eco-

1. Mises, Socialism (new ed., New Haven, Yale University Press,
1951), pp. 15-16.

THE QUEST FOR ABSOLUTE VALUES 65

nomic calculation, could never function as an economic
system, all arguments advanced in favor of the great
reform collapsed. From that time on socialists no longer
based their hopes upon the power of their arguments
but upon the resentment, envy, and hatred of the
masses. Today even the adepts of "scientific" socialism
rely exclusively upon these emotional factors. The basis
of contemporary socialism and interventionism is judg-
ments of value. Socialism is praised as the only fair va-
riety of society's economic organization. All socialists,
Marxians as well as non-Marxians, advocate socialism
as the only system consonant with a scale of arbitrarily
established absolute values. These values, they claim,
are the only values that are valid for all decent people,
foremost among them the workers, the majority in a
modern industrial society. They are considered absolute
because they are supported by the majority — and the
majority is always right.

A rather superficial and shallow view of the problems
of government saw the distinction between freedom
and despotism in an outward feature of the system of
rule and administration, viz., in the number of people
exercising direct control of the social apparatus of coer-
cion and compulsion. Such a numerical standard is the
basis of Aristotle's famous classification of the various
forms of government. The concepts of monarchy, oli-
garchy, and democracy still preserve this way of dealing
with the matter. Yet its inadequacy is so obvious that
no philosopher could avoid referring to facts which did
not agree with it and therefore were considered para-
doxical. There was for instance the fact, already well

66 VALUE

recognized by Greek authors, that tyranny was often,
or even regularly, supported by the masses and was in
this sense popular government. Modern writers have
employed the term "Caesarism" for this type of govern-
ment and have continued to look upon it as an excep-
tional case conditioned by peculiar circumstances; but
they have been at a loss to explain satisfactorily what
made the conditions exceptional. Yet, fascinated by the
traditional classification, people acquiesced in this
superficial interpretation as long as it seemed that it
had to explain only one case in modern European his-
tory, that of the second French Empire. The final col-
lapse of the Aristotelian doctrine came only when it
had to face the "dictatorship of the proletariat" and the
autocracy of Hitler, Mussolini, Peron, and other modern
successors of the Greek tyrants.

The way toward a realistic distinction between free-
dom and bondage was opened, two hundred years ago,
by David Hume's immortal essay, On the First Prin-
ciples of Government. Government, taught Hume, is
always government of the many by the few. Power is
therefore always ultimately on the side of the governed,
and the governors have nothing to support them but
opinion. This cognition, logically followed to its conclu-
sion, completely changed the discussion concerning
liberty. The mechanical and arithmetical point of view
was abandoned. If public opinion is ultimately respon-
sible for the structure of government, it is also the
agency that determines whether there is freedom or
bondage. There is virtually only one factor that has the
power to make people unfree — tyrannical public opin-
ion. The struggle for freedom is ultimately not resistance

THE QUEST FOR ABSOLUTE VALUES 67

to autocrats or oligarchs but resistance to the despotism
of public opinion. It is not the struggle of the many
against the few but of minorities — sometimes of a mi-
nority of but one man — against the majority. The worst
and most dangerous form of absolutist rule is that of an
intolerant majority. Such is the conclusion arrived at
by Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill.

In his essay on Bentham, Mill pointed out why this
eminent philosopher failed to see the real issue and why
his doctrine found acceptance with some of the noblest
spirits. Bentham, he says, lived "in a time of reaction
against the aristocratic governments of modern Europe."
The reformers of his age "have been accustomed to see
the numerical majority everywhere unjustly depressed,
everywhere trampled upon, or at the best overlooked, by
governments." In such an age one could easily forget
that "all countries which have long continued progres-
sive, or been durably great, have been so because there
has been an organized opposition to the ruling power,
of whatever kind that power was. . . . Almost all the
greatest men who ever lived have formed part of such
an opposition. Wherever some such quarrel has not been
going on — wherever it has been terminated by the
complete victory of one of the contending principles,
and no new contest has taken the place of the old —
society has either hardened into Chinese stationariness,
or fallen into dissolution." 2

Much of what was sound in Bentham's political doc-
trines was slighted by his contemporaries, was denied by

2. John Stuart Mill on Bentham, ed. by F. R. Leavis under the
title Mill on Bentham and Coleridge (New York, Stewart, 1950),
pp. 85-7.

68 VALUE

later generations, and had little practical influence. But
his failure to distinguish correctly between despotism
and liberty was accepted without qualms by most nine-
teenth-century writers. In their eyes true liberty meant
the unbridled despotism of the majority.

Lacking the power to think logically, and ignorant
of history as well as of theory, the much admired "pro-
gressive" writers gave up the essential idea of the En-
lightenment: freedom of thought, speech, and com-
munication. Not all of them were so outspoken as
Comte and Lenin; but they all, in declaring that free-
dom means only the right to say the correct things, not
also the right to say the wrong things, virtually con-
verted the ideas of freedom of thought and conscience
into their opposite. It was not the Syllabus of Pope Pius
IX that paved the way for the return of intolerance and
the persecution of dissenters. It was the writings of the
socialists. After a short-lived triumph of the idea of
freedom, bondage made a comeback disguised as a
consummation and completion of the philosophy of
freedom, as the finishing of the unfinished revolution,
as the final emancipation of the individual.

The concept of absolute and eternal values is an in-
dispensable element in this totalitarian ideology. A new
notion of truth was established. Truth is what those in
power declare to be true. The dissenting minority is
undemocratic because it refuses to accept as true the
opinion of the majority. All means to "liquidate" such
rebellious scoundrels are "democratic" and therefore
morally good.

Chapter 4. The Negation of Valuation

In dealing with judgments of value we have looked
upon them as ultimate data not liable to any reduction
to other data. We do not contend that judgments of
value as they are uttered by men and used as guides to
action are primary facts independent of all the other
conditions of the universe. Such an assumption would
be preposterous. Man is a part of the universe, he is the
product of the forces operating in it, and all his thoughts
and actions are, like the stars, the atoms, and the ani-
mals, elements of nature. They are embedded in the in-
exorable concatenation of all phenomena and events.

Saying that judgments of value are ultimately given
facts means that the human mind is unable to trace
them back to those facts and happenings with which
the natural sciences deal. We do not know why and how
definite conditions of the external world arouse in a
human mind a definite reaction. We do not know why
different people and the same people at various in-
stants of their lives react differently to the same ex-
ternal stimuli. We cannot discover the necessary con-
nection between an external event and the ideas it pro-
duces within the human mind.

To clarify this issue we must now analyze the doc-
trines supporting the contrary opinion. We must deal
with all varieties of materialism.

PART TWO. DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

Chapter 5. Determinism and Its Critics

1. Determinism

Whatever the true nature of the universe and of
reality may be, man can learn about it only what the
logical structure of his mind makes comprehensible to
him. Reason, the sole instrument of human science and
philosophy, does not convey absolute knowledge and
final wisdom. It is vain to speculate about ultimate
things. What appears to man's inquiry as an ultimate
given, defying further analysis and reduction to some-
thing more fundamental, may or may not appear such
to a more perfect intellect. We do not know.

Man cannot grasp either the concept of absolute
nothingness or that of the genesis of something out
of nothing. The very idea of creation transcends his
comprehension. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
whom Pascal in his Memorial opposed to that of the
"philosophes et savants," is a living image and has a
clear and definite meaning for the faithful believer. But
the philosophers in their endeavors to construct a con-
cept of Cod, his attributes, and his conduct of world
affairs, became involved in insoluble contradictions and
paradoxes. A Cod whose essence and ways of acting
mortal man could neatly circumscribe and define would
not resemble the God of the prophets, the saints, and
the mystics.

73

74 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

The logical structure of his mind enjoins upon man
determinism and the category of causality. As man sees
it, whatever happens in the universe is the necessary
evolution of forces, powers, and qualities which were
already present in the initial stage of the X out of which
all things stem. All things in the universe are intercon-
nected, and all changes are the effects of powers in-
herent in things. No change occurs that would not be
the necessary consequence of the preceding state. All
facts are dependent upon and conditioned by their
causes. No deviation from the necessary course of af-
fairs is possible. Eternal law regulates everything.

In this sense determinism is the epistemological basis
of the human search for knowledge 1 Man cannot even
conceive the image of an undetermined universe. In
such a world there could not be any awareness of ma-
terial things and their changes. It would appear a sense-
less chaos. Nothing could be identified and distin-
guished from anything else. Nothing could be expected
and predicted. In the midst of such an environment
man would be as helpless as if spoken to in an unknown
language. No action could be designed, still less put
into execution. Man is what he is because he lives in
a world of regularity and has the mental power to con-
ceive the relation of cause and effect.

Any epistemological speculation must lead toward
determinism. But the acceptance of determinism raises
some theoretical difficulties that have seemed to be in-

1. "La science est deterministe; elle Test a priori; elle postule le
d&erminisme, paice que sans lui elle ne pouirait &tre." Henri Poin-
care, Demiires penstes (Paris, Flammarion, 1913), p. 244.

DETERMINISM AND ITS CRITICS 75

soluble. While no philosophy has disproved determin-
ism, there are some ideas that people have not been
able to bring into agreement with it. Passionate attacks
have been directed against it because people believed
that it must ultimately result in absurdity.

2. The Negation of Ideological Factors

Many authors have assumed that determinism, fully
implying consistent materialism, strictly denies that
mental acts play any role in the course of events. Causa-
tion, in the context of the doctrine so understood, means
mechanical causation. All changes are brought about by
material entities, processes, and events. Ideas are just
intermediary stages in the process through which a ma-
terial factor produces a definite material effect. They
have no autonomous existence. They merely mirror the
state of the material entities that begot them. There is
no history of ideas and of actions directed by them, only
a history of the evolution of the real factors that en-
gender ideas.

From the point of view of this integral materialism,
the only consistent materialist doctrine, the customary
methods of historians and biographers are to be rejected
as idealistic nonsense. It is vain to search for the de-
velopment of certain ideas out of other previously held
ideas. For example, it is "unscientific" to describe how
the philosophical ideas of the seventeenth and eight-
eenth centuries evolved out of those of the sixteenth
century. "Scientific" history would have to describe how
out of the real — physical and biological — conditions

76 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

of each age its philosophical tenets necessarily spring.
It is "unscientific" to describe as a mental process the
evolution of Saint Augustine's ideas that led him from
Cicero to Manichaeus and from Manichaeism to Ca-
tholicism. The "scientific" biographer would have to
reveal the physiological processes that necessarily re-
sulted in the corresponding philosophical doctrines.

The examination of materialism is a task to be left
to the following chapters. At this point it is enough to
establish the fact that determinism in itself does not
imply any concessions to the materialist standpoint. It
does not negate the obvious truth that ideas have an
existence of their own, contribute to the emergence of
other ideas, and influence one another. It does not deny
mental causation and does not reject history as a meta-
physical and idealistic illusion.

3. The Free-WtU Controversy

Man chooses between modes of action incompatible
with one another. Such decisions, says the free-will doc-
trine, are basically undetermined and uncaused; they
are not the inevitable outcome of antecedent conditions.
They are rather the display of man's inmost disposition,
the manifestation of his indelible moral freedom. This
moral liberty is the essential characteristic of man, rais-
ing him to a unique position in the universe.

Determinists reject this doctrine as illusory. Man,
they say, deceives himself in believing that he chooses.
Something unknown to the individual directs his will.
He thinks that he weighs in his mind the pros and cons

DETERMINISM AND ITS CRITICS 77

of the alternatives left to his choice and then makes a
decision. He fails to realize that the antecedent state of
things enjoins on him a definite line of conduct and that
there is no means to elude this pressure. Man does not
act, he is acted upon.

Both doctrines neglect to pay due attention to the role
of ideas. The choices a man makes are determined by
the ideas that he adopts.

The determinists are right in asserting that every-
thing that happens is the necessary sequel of the pre-
ceding state of things. What a man does at any instant
of his life is entirely dependent on his past, that is, on
his physiological inheritance as well as of all he went
through in his previous days. Yet the significance of this
thesis is considerably weakened by the fact that nothing
is known about the way in which ideas arise. Deter-
minism is untenable if based upon or connected with
the materialist dogma. 1 If advanced without the sup-
port of materialism, it says little indeed and certainly
does not sustain the determinists' rejection of the
methods of history.

The free-will doctrine is correct in pointing out the
fundamental difference between human action and ani-
mal behavior. While the animal cannot help yielding
to the physiological impulse which prevails at the mo-
ment, man chooses between alternative modes of con-
duct. Man has the power to choose even between yield-
ing to the most imperative instinct, that of self-preserva-
tion, and the aiming at other ends. All the sarcasms and
sneers of the positivists cannot annul the fact that ideas

1. See below, pp. 94-9.

78 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

have a real existence and are genuine factors in shaping
the course of events.

The offshoots of human mental efforts, the ideas and
the judgments of value that direct the individuals' ac-
tions, cannot be traced back to their causes, and are in
this sense ultimate data. In dealing with them we refer
to the concept of individuality. But in resorting to this
notion we by no means imply that ideas and judgments
of value spring out of nothing by a sort of spontaneous
generation and are in no way connected and related to
what was already in the universe before their appear-
ance. We merely establish the fact that we do not know
anything about the mental process which produces
within a human being the thoughts that respond to the
state of his physical and ideological environment.

This cognition is the grain of truth in the free-will
doctrine. However, the passionate attempts to refute de-
terminism and to salvage the notion of free will did
not concern the problem of individuality. They were
prompted by the practical consequences to which, as
people believed, determinism inevitably leads: fatalist
quietism and absolution from moral responsibility.

4. Foreordination and Fatalism

As theologians teach, God in his omniscience knows
in advance all the things that will happen in the uni-
verse for all time to come. His foresight is unlimited and
is not merely the result of his knowledge of the laws of
becoming that determine all events. Even in a universe
in which there is free will, whatever this may be, his

DETERMINISM AND ITS CRITICS 79

precognition is perfect. He anticipates fully and cor-
rectly all the arbitrary decisions any individual will
ever make.

Laplace proudly declared that his system does not
need to resort to the hypothesis of God's existence. But
he constructed his own image of a quasi God and called
it superhuman intelligence. This hypothetical mind
knows all things and events beforehand, but only be-
cause it is familiar with all the immutable and eternal
laws regulating all occurrences, mental as well as phys-
ical.

The idea of God's omniscience has been popularly
pictured as a book in which all future things are re-
corded. No deviation from the lines described in this
register is possible. All things will turn out precisely as
written in it. What must happen will happen no matter
what mortal man may undertake to bring about a differ-
ent result. Hence, consistent fatalism concluded, it is
useless for man to act. Why bother if everything must
finally come to a preordained end?

Fatalism is so contrary to human nature that few peo-
ple were prepared to draw all the conclusions to which
it leads and to adjust their conduct accordingly. It is
a fable that the victories of the Arabian conquerors in
the first centuries of Islam were due to the fatalist
teachings of Mohammed. The leaders of the Moslem
armies which within an unbelievably short time con-
quered a great part of the Mediterranean area did not
put a fatalistic confidence in Allah. Rather they believed
that their God was for the big, well-equipped, and skill-
fully led battalions. Other reasons than blind trust in

80 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

fate account for the courage of the Saracen warriors;
and the Christians in the forces of Charles Martel and
Leo the Isaurian who stopped their advance were no
less courageous than the Moslems although fatalism had
no hold on their minds. Nor was the lethargy which
spread later among the Islamitic peoples caused by the
fatalism of their religion. It was despotism that para-
lyzed the initiative of the subjects. The harsh tyrants
who oppressed the masses were certainly not lethargic
and apathetic. They were indefatigable in their quest
for power, riches, and pleasures.

Soothsayers have claimed to have reliable knowledge
of some pages at least of the great book in which all
coming events are recorded. But none of these prophets
was consistent enough to reject activism and to advise
his disciples to wait quietly for the day of fulfillment.

The best illustration is provided by Marxism. It
teaches perfect foreordination, yet still aims to inflame
people with revolutionary spirit. What is the use of
revolutionary action if events must inevitably turn out
according to a preordained plan, whatever men may
do? Why are the Marxians so busy organizing socialist
parties and sabotaging the operation of the market
economy if socialism is bound to come anyway "with
the inexorability of a law of nature"? It is a lame excuse
indeed to declare that the task of a socialist party is not
to bring about socialism but merely to provide obstet-
rical assistance at its birth. The obstetrician too diverts
the course of events from the way they would run with-
out his intervention. Otherwise expectant mothers
would not request his aid. Yet the essential teaching of

DETERMINISM AND ITS CRITICS 81

Marxian dialectic materialism precludes the assumption
that any political or ideological fact could influence the
course of historical events, since the latter are sub-
stantially determined by the evolution of the material
productive forces. What brings about socialism is the
"operation of the immanent laws of capitalistic produc-
tion itself." 1 Ideas, political parties, and revolutionary
actions are merely superstructural; they can neither de-
lay nor accelerate the march of history. Socialism will
come when the material conditions for its appearance
have matured in the womb of capitalist society, neither
sooner nor later. 2 If Marx had been consistent, he would
not have embarked upon any political activity. 3 He
would have quietly waited for the day on which the
"knell of private capitalist property sounds." *

In dealing with fatalism we may ignore the claims of
soothsayers. Determinism has nothing at all to do with
the art of fortune tellers, crystal gazers, and astrologers
or with the more pretentious effusions of the authors of
"philosophies of history." It does not predict future
events. It asserts that there is regularity in the universe
in the concatenation of all phenomena.

Those theologians who thought that in order to refute
fatalism they must adopt the free-will doctrine were

1. Marx, Das Kapital (7th ed. Hamburg, 1914), 1, 728.

2. Cf. below pp. 107 and 128.

3. Neither would he have written the often quoted eleventh aphor-
ism on Feuerbach: "The philosophers have only provided different
interpretations of the world, but what matters is to change it." Ac-
cording to the teachings of dialectical materialism only the evolu-
tion of the material productive forces, not the philosophers, can
change the world.

4. Marx, Das Kapital, as quoted above.

82 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

badly mistaken. They had a very defective image of
God's omniscience. Their God would know only what
is in perfect textbooks of the natural sciences; he would
not know what is going on in human minds. He would
not anticipate that some people might endorse the doc-
trine of fatalism and, sitting with clasped hands, in-
dolently await the events which God, erroneously as-
suming that they would not indulge in inactivity, had
meted out to them.

5. Determinism and Penology

A factor that often entered the controversies concern-
ing determinism was misapprehension as to its practical
consequences.

All nonutilitarian systems of ethics look upon the
moral law as something outside the nexus of means and
ends. The moral code has no reference to human well-
being and happiness, to expediency, and to the mun-
dane striving after ends. It is heteronomous, i.e., en-
joined upon man by an agency that does not depend on
human ideas and does not bother about human con-
cerns. Some believe that this agency is God, others that
it is the wisdom of the forefathers, some that it is a
mystical inner voice alive in every decent man's con-
science. He who violates the precepts of this code com-
mits a sin, and his guilt makes him liable to punishment.
Punishment does not serve human ends. In punishing
offenders, the secular or theocratic authorities acquit
themselves of a duty entrusted to them by the moral
code and its author. They are bound to punish sin and

DETERMINISM AND ITS CRITICS 83

guilt whatever the consequences of their action may be.

Now these metaphysical notions of guilt, sin, and
retribution are incompatible with the doctrine of de-
terminism. If all human actions are the inevitable effect
of their causes, if the individual cannot help acting in
the way antecedent conditions make him act, there
can no longer be any question of guilt. What a haughty
presumption to punish a man who simply did what the
eternal laws of the universe had determined!

The philosophers and lawyers who attacked deter-
minism on these grounds failed to see that the doctrine
of an almighty and omniscient God led to the same con-
clusions that moved them to reject philosophical deter-
minism. If God is almighty, nothing can happen that
he does not want to happen. If he is omniscient, he
knows in advance all things that will happen. In either
case, man cannot be considered answerable. 1 The young
Benjamin Franklin argued "from the supposed attri-
butes of God" in this manner: "That in erecting and
governing the world, as he was infinitely wise, he knew
what would be best; infinitely good, he must be dis-
posed; and infinitely powerful, he must be able to exe-
cute it. Consequently all is right." * In fact, all attempts

1. See Fritz Mauthner, Worterbuch der Phttosophie (2d ed. Leip-
zig. 1923), 1. 462-7.

2. Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography (New York, A. L. Burt, n.d.),
pp. 73-4. Franklin very soo» gave up this reasoning. He declared:
"The great uncertainty I found in metaphysical reasonings disgusted
me, and I quitted that kind of reading and study for others more satis-
factory." In the posthumous papers of Franz Brentano a rather un-
convincing refutation of Franklin's flash of thought was found. It was
published by Oskar Kraus in his edition of Brentano's Voro Ur sprung
sUtlicher Erkenntnit (Leipzig, 1921), pp. 91-5.

84 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

to justify, on metaphysical and theological grounds, so-
ciety's right to punish those whose actions jeopardize
peaceful social cooperation are open to the same criti-
cism that is leveled against philosophical determinism.
Utilitarian ethics approaches the problem of punish-
ment from a different angle. The offender is not pun-
ished because he is bad and deserves chastisement but
so that neither he nor other people will repeat the of-
fense. Punishment is not inflicted as retribution and
retaliation but as a means to prevent future crimes.
Legislators and judges are not the mandataries of a
metaphysical retributive justice. They are committed to
the task of safeguarding the smooth operation of so-
ciety against encroachments on the part of antisocial
individuals. Hence it is possible to deal with the prob-
lem of determinism without being troubled by inane
considerations of practical consequences concerning
the penal code.

6. Determinism and Statistics

In the nineteenth century some thinkers maintained
that statistics have irrefutably demolished the doctrine
of free will. It was argued that statistics show a regular-
ity in the occurrence of certain human acts, e.g., crimes
and suicides; and this alleged regularity was inter-
preted by Adolphe Quetelet and by Thomas Henry
Buckle as an empirical demonstration of the correctness
of rigid determinism.

However, what the statistics of human actions really
show is not regularity but irregularity. The number

DETERMINISM AND ITS CRITICS 85

of crimes, suicides, and acts of forgetfulness — which
play such a conspicuous role in Buckle's deductions —
varies from year to year. These yearly changes are as a
rule small, and over a period of years they often — but
not always— show a definite trend toward either in-
crease or decrease. These statistics are indicative of his-
torical change, not of regularity in the sense which is
attached to this term in the natural sciences.

The specific understanding of history can try to in-
terpret the why of such changes effected in the past and
to anticipate changes likely to happen in the future. In
doing this it deals with judgments of value determining
the choice of ultimate ends, with reasoning and knowl-
edge determining the choice of means, and with thy-
mological traits of individuals. 1 It must, sooner or later,
but inevitably, reach a point at which it can only refer
to individuality. From beginning to end the treatment
of the problems involved is bound to follow the lines of
every scrutiny of human affairs; it must be teleological
and as such radically different from the methods of the
natural sciences.

But Buckle, blinded by the positivist bigotry of his
environment, was quick to formulate his law: "In a
given state of society a certain number of persons must
put an end to their own life. This is the general law;
and the special question as to who shall commit the
crime depends of course upon special laws; which, how-
ever, in their total action must obey the large social
law to which they are all subordinate. And the power of
the larger law is so irresistible that neither the love of

1. On thymology see pp. 264 S.

86 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

life nor the fear of another world can avail anything
towards even checking its operation." 2 Buckle's law
seems to be very definite and unambiguous in its formu-
lation. But in fact it defeats itself entirely by including
the phrase "a given state of society," which even an
enthusiastic admirer of Buckle termed "viciously
vague."* As Buckle does not provide us with criteria
for determining changes in the state of society, his
formulation can be neither verified nor disproved by ex-
perience and thus lacks the distinctive mark of a law
of the natural sciences.

Many years after Buckle, eminent physicists began
to assume that certain or even all laws of mechanics
may be "only" statistical in character. This doctrine
was considered incompatible with determinism and
causality. When later on quantum mechanics consider-
ably enlarged the scope of "merely" statistical physics,
many writers cast away all the epistemological prin-
ciples that had guided the natural sciences for cen-
turies. On the macroscopic scale, they say, we observe
certain regularities which older generations erroneously
interpreted as a manifestation of natural law. In fact,
these regularities are the result of the statistical com-
pensation of contingent events. The apparent causal
arrangement on a large scale is to be explained by the
law of large numbers. 4

2. Buckle, Introduction to the History of Civilization in England,
J. M. Robertson, ed. (London, G. Routledge; New York, E. P. Dut-
ton, n.d.), ch. 1 in I, 15-16.

3. J. M. Robertson, Buckle and His Critic* (London, 1895), p. 288.

4. John von Neumann, Mathematische Grundlagen der Quanten-
mechanik (New York, 1943), pp. 172 ff.

DETERMINISM AND ITS CRITICS 87

Now the law of large numbers and statistical com-
pensation is operative only in fields in which there pre-
vail large-scale regularity and homogeneity of such a
character that they offset any irregularity and hetero-
geneity that may seem to exist on the small-scale level.
If one assumes that seemingly contingent events always
compensate one another in such a way that a regularity
appears in the repeated observation of large numbers
of these events, one implies that these events follow a
definite pattern and can therefore no longer be con-
sidered as contingent. What we mean in speaking of
natural law is that there is a regularity in the concatena-
tion and sequence of phenomena. If a set of events on
the microscopic scale always produces a definite event
on the macroscopic scale, such a regularity is present.
If there were no regularity in the microscopic scale, no
regularity could emerge on the macroscopic scale
either.

Quantum mechanics deals with the fact that we do
not know how an atom will behave in an individual in-
stance. But we know what patterns of behavior can
possibly occur and the proportion in which these pat-
terns really occur. While the perfect form of a causal
law is: A "produces" B, there is also a less perfect form:
A "produces" C in n% of all cases, D in m% of all cases,
and so on. Perhaps it will at a later day be possible to
dissolve this A of the less perfect form into a number of
disparate elements to each of which a definite "effect"
will be assigned according to the perfect form. But
whether this will happen or not is of no relevance for
the problem of determinism. The imperfect law too is a

88 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

causal law, although it discloses shortcomings in our
knowledge. And because it is a display of a peculiar
type both of knowledge and of ignorance, it opens a
field for the employment of the calculus of probability.
We know, with regard to a definite problem, all about
the behavior of the whole class of events, we know that
class A will produce definite effects in a known propor-
tion; but all we know about the individual A's is that
they are members of the A class. The mathematical
formulation of this mixture of knowledge and ignorance
is: We know the probability of the various effects that
can possibly be "produced" by an individual A.

What the neo-indeterminist school of physics fails to
see is that the proposition: A produces B in n% of the
cases and C in the rest of the cases is, epistemologically,
not different from the proposition: A always produces
B. The former proposition differs from the latter only in
combining in its notion of A two elements, X and Y,
which the perfect form of a causal law would have to
distinguish. But no question of contingency is raised.
Quantum mechanics does not say: The individual atoms
behave like customers choosing dishes in a restaurant
or voters casting their ballots. It says: The atoms in-
variably follow a definite pattern. This is also mani-
fested in the fact that what it predicates about atoms
contains no reference either to a definite period of time
or to a definite location within the universe. One could
not deal with the behavior of atoms in general, that is,
without reference to time and space, if the individual
atom were not inevitably and fully ruled by natural law.
We are free to use the term "individual" atom, but we

DETERMINISM AND ITS CRITICS 89

must never ascribe to an "individual" atom individuality
in the sense in which this term is applied to men and to
historical events.

In the field of human action the determinist philos-
ophers referred to statistics in order to refute the doc-
trine of free will and to prove determinism in the acts of
man. In the field of physics the neo-indeterminist philos-
ophers refer to statistics in order to refute the doctrine
of determinism and to prove indeterminism in nature.
The error of both sides arises from confusion as to the
meaning of statistics.

In the field of human action statistics is a method of
historical research. It is a description in numerical terms
of historical events that happened in a definite period
of time with definite groups of people in a definite geo-
graphical area. Its meaning consists precisely in the
fact that it describes changes, not something unchang-
ing.

In the field of nature statistics is a method of induc-
tive research. Its epistemological justification and its
meaning lie in the firm belief that there are regularity
and perfect determinism in nature. The laws of nature
are considered perennial. They are fully operative in
each instance. What happens in one case must also
happen in all other like cases. Therefore the information
conveyed by statistical material has general validity
with regard to the classes of phenomena to which it
refers; it does not concern only definite periods of his-
tory and definite geographical sites.

Unfortunately the two entirely different categories
of statistics have been confused. And the matter has

90 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

been still further tangled by jumbling it together with
the notion of probability.

To unravel this imbroglio of errors, misunderstanding,
and contradictions let us emphasize some truisms.

It is impossible, as has been pointed out above, for
the human mind to think of any event as uncaused. The
concepts of chance and contingency, if properly ana-
lyzed, do not refer ultimately to the course of events in
the universe. They refer to human knowledge, pre-
vision, and action. They have a praxeological, not an
ontological connotation.

Calling an event contingent is not to deny that it is
the necessary outcome of the preceding state of affairs.
It means that we mortal men do not know whether or
not it will happen.

Our notion of nature refers to an ascertainable, per-
manent regularity in the concatenation and sequence
of phenomena. Whatever happens in nature and can be
conceived by the natural sciences is the outcome of the
operation, repeated and repeated again, of the same
laws. Natural science means the cognition of these laws.
The historical sciences of human action, on the other
hand, deal with events which our mental faculties can-
not interpret as a manifestation of a general law. They
deal with individual men and individual events even in
dealing with the affairs of masses, peoples, races, and
the whole of mankind. They deal with individuality and
with an irreversible flux of events. If the natural sciences
scrutinize an event that happened but once, such as a
geological change or the biological evolution of a
species, they look upon it as an instance of the operation

DETERMINISM AND ITS CRITICS 91

of general laws. But history is not in a position to trace
events back to the operation of perennial laws. There-
fore in dealing with an event it is primarily interested
not in the features such an event may have in common
with other events but in its individual characteristics.
In dealing with the assassination of Caesar history does
not study murder but the murder of the man Caesar.

The very notion of a natural law whose validity is re-
stricted to a definite period of time is self -contradictory.
Experience, whether that of mundane observation as
made in daily life or that of deliberately prearranged
experiments, refers to individual historical cases. But the
natural sciences, guided by their indispensable aprior-
istic determinism, assume that the law must manifest
itself in every individual case, and generalize by what
is called inductive inference.

The present epistemological situation in the field of
quantum mechanics would be correctly described by the
statement: We know the various patterns according to
which atoms behave and we know the proportion in
which each of these patterns becomes actual. This
would describe the state of our knowledge as an instance
of class probability: We know all about the behavior of
the whole class; about the behavior of the individual
members of the class we know only that they are mem-
bers. 8 It is inexpedient and misleading to apply to the
problems concerned terms used in dealing with human
action. Bertrand Russell resorts to such figurative
speech: the atom "will do" something, there is "a

5. On the distinction between class probability and case probabil-
ity, see Mises, Human Action, pp. 107-13.

92 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

definite set of alternatives open to it, and it chooses
sometimes one, sometimes another." 9 The reason Lord
Russell chooses such inappropriate terms becomes ob-
vious if we take into account the tendency of his book
and of all his other writings. He wants to obliterate the
difference between acting man and human action on
the one hand and nonhuman events on the other hand.
In his eyes "the difference between us and a stone is
only one of degree"; for "we react to stimuli, and so do
stones, though the stimuli to which they react are
fewer." 7 Lord Russell omits to mention the fundamental
difference in the way stones and men "react." Stones
react according to a perennial pattern, which we call a
law of nature. Men do not react in such a uniform way;
they behave, as both praxeologists and historians say,
in an individual way. Nobody has ever succeeded in
assigning various men to classes each member of which
behaves according to the same pattern.

7. The Autonomy of the Sciences of Human Action

The phraseology employed in the old antagonism of
determinism and indeterminism is inappropriate. It does
not correctly describe the substance of the controversy.

The search for knowledge is always concerned with
the concatenation of events and the cognition of the
factors producing change. In this sense both the natural
sciences and the sciences of human action are com-
mitted to the category of causality and to determinism.

6. Bertrand Russell, Religion and Science, Home University Li-
brary (London, Oxford University Press, 1936), pp. 152-8.

7. Ibid., p. 131.

DETERMINISM AND ITS CRITICS 93

No action can ever succeed if not guided by a true —
in the sense of pragmatism — insight into what is com-
monly called a relation of cause and effect. The funda-
mental category of action, viz., means and ends, pre-
supposes the category of cause and effect.

What the sciences of human action must reject is not
determinism but the positivistic and panphysicalistic
distortion of determinism. They stress the fact that
ideas determine human action and that at least in the
present state of human science it is impossible to reduce
the emergence and the transformation of ideas to phys-
ical, chemical, or biological factors. It is this impossibil-
ity that constitutes the autonomy of the sciences of hu-
man action. Perhaps natural science will one day be in
a position to describe the physical, chemical, and bi-
ological events which in the body of the man Newton
necessarily and inevitably produced the theory of gravi-
tation. In the meantime, we must be content with the
study of the history of ideas as a part of the sciences of
human action.

The sciences of human action by no means reject de-
terminism. The objective of history is to bring out in
full relief the factors that were operative in producing
a definite event. History is entirely guided by the cate-
gory of cause and effect. In retrospect, there is no ques-
tion of contingency. The notion of contingency as em-
ployed in dealing with human action always refers to
man's uncertainty about the future and the limitations
of the specific historical understanding of future events.
It refers to a limitation of the human search for knowl-
edge, not to a condition of the universe or of some of
its parts.

Chapter 6. Materialism

1. Two Varieties of Materialism

The term "materialism" as applied in contemporary
speech has two entirely different connotations.

The first connotation refers to values. It characterizes
the mentality of people who desire only material
wealth, bodily satisfactions, and sensuous pleasures.

The second connotation is ontological. It signifies the
doctrine that all human thoughts, ideas, judgments of
value, and volitions are the product of physical, chem-
ical, and physiological processes going on in the human
body. Consequently materialism in this sense denies the
meaningfulness of thymology and the sciences of hu-
man action, of praxeology as well as of history; the
natural sciences alone are scientific. We shall deal in
this chapter only with this second connotation.

The materialist thesis has never yet been proved or
particularized. The materialists have brought forward
no more than analogies and metaphors. They have com-
pared the working of the human mind with the opera-
tion of a machine or with physiological processes. Both
analogies are insignificant and do not explain anything.

A machine is a device made by man. It is the realiza-
tion of a design and it runs precisely according to the
plan of its authors. What produces the product of its
operation is not something within it but the purpose

94

MATERIALISM 95

the constructor wanted to realize by means of its con-
struction. It is the constructor and the operator who
create the product, not the machine. To ascribe to a
machine any activity is anthropomorphism and animism.
The machine has no control over its running. It does not
move; it is put into motion and kept in motion by men.
It is a dead tool which is employed by men and comes to
a standstill as soon as the effects of the operator's im-
pulse cease. What the materialist who resorts to the
machine metaphor would have to explain first of all is:
Who constructed this human machine and who oper-
ates it? In whose hands does it serve as a tool? It is dif-
ficult to see how any other answer could be given to this
question than: It is the Creator.

It is customary to call an automatic contrivance self-
acting. This idiom too is a metaphor. It is not the cal-
culating machine that calculates, but the operator by
means of a tool ingeniously devised by an inventor. The
machine has no intelligence; it neither thinks nor
chooses ends nor resorts to means for the realization of
the ends sought. This is always done by men.

The physiological analogy is more sensible than the
mechanistic analogy. Thinking is inseparably tied up
with a physiological process. As far as the physiological
thesis merely stresses this fact, it is not metaphorical;
but it says very little. For the problem is precisely this,
that we do not know anything about the physiological
phenomena constituting the process that produces
poems, theories, and plans. Pathology provides abun-
dant information about the impairment or total annihila-
tion of mental faculties resulting from injuries of the

96 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

brain. Anatomy provides no less abundant information
about the chemical structure of the brain cells and
their physiological behavior. But notwithstanding the
advance in physiological knowledge, we do not know
more about the mind-body problem than the old philos-
ophers who first began to ponder it. None of the doc-
trines they advanced has been either proved or dis-
proved by newly won physiological knowledge.

Thoughts and ideas are not phantoms. They are real
things. Although intangible and immaterial, they are
factors in bringing about changes in the realm of
tangible and material things. They are generated by
some unknown process going on in a human being's
body and can be perceived only by the same kind of
process going on in the body of their author or in other
human beings' bodies. They can be called creative and
original insofar as the impulse they give and the changes
they bring about depend on their emergence. We can
ascertain what we wish to about the life of an idea and
the effects of its existence. About its birth we know only
that it was engendered by an individual. We cannot
trace its history further back. The emergence of an idea
is an innovation, a new fact added to the world. It is,
because of the deficiency of our knowledge, for human
minds the origin of something new that did not exist be-
fore.

What a satisfactory materialist doctrine would have
to describe is the sequence of events going on in matter
that produces a definite idea. It would have to explain
why people agree or disagree with regard to definite
problems. It would have to explain why one man sue-

MATERIALISM 97

ceeded in solving a problem which other people failed
to solve. But no materialistic doctrine has up to now
tried to do this.

The champions of materialism are intent upon point-
ing out the untenability of all other doctrines that have
been advanced for the solution of the mind-body prob-
lem. They are especially zealous in fighting the the-
ological interpretation. Yet the refutation of a doctrine
does not prove the soundness of any other doctrine at
variance with it.

Perhaps it is too bold a venture for the human mind
to speculate about its own nature and origin. It may be
true, as agnosticism maintains, that knowledge about
these problems is forever denied to mortal men. But
even if this is so, it does not justify the logical positivists*
condemning the questions implied as meaningless and
nonsensical. A question is not nonsensical merely be-
cause it cannot be answered satisfactorily by the human
mind.

2. The Secretion Analogy

A notorious formulation of the materialist thesis
states that thoughts stand in about the same relation to
the brain as the gall to the liver or urine to the kidneys. 1
As a rule materialist authors are more cautious in their
utterances. But essentially all they say is tantamount
to this challenging dictum.

Physiology distinguishes between urine of a chem-

1. C. Vogt, Kohlerglaube und Wisseruchaft (2d ed. Giessen, 1855),
p. 32.

98 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

ically normal composition and other types of urine. De-
viation from the normal composition is accounted for by
certain deviations in the body's physique or in the func-
tioning of the body's organs from what is considered
normal and healthy. These deviations too follow a regu-
lar pattern. A definite abnormal or pathological state
of the body is reflected in a corresponding alteration of
the urine's chemical composition. The assimilation of
certain f oodstuffs, beverages, and drugs brings about re-
lated phenomena in the urine's composition. With hale
people, those commonly called normal, urine is, within
certain narrow margins, of the same chemical nature.

It is different with thoughts and ideas. With them
there is no question of normalcy or of deviations from
normalcy following a definite pattern. Certain bodily
injuries or the assimilation of certain drugs and bever-
ages obstruct and trouble the mind's faculty to think.
But even these derangements are not uniform with
various people. Different people have different ideas,
and no materialist ever succeeded in tracing back these
differences to factors that could be described in terms of
physics, chemistry, or physiology. Any reference to the
natural sciences and to material factors they are dealing
with is vain when we ask why some people vote the Re-
publican and others the Democratic ticket.

Up to now at least the natural sciences have not suc-
ceeded in discovering any bodily or material traits to
whose presence or absence the content of ideas and
thoughts can be imputed. In fact, the problem of the
diversity of the content of ideas and thoughts does not
even arise in the natural sciences. They can deal only

MATERIALISM 99

with objects that affect or modify sensuous intuition.
But ideas and thoughts do not directly affect sensation.
What characterizes them is meaning — and for the cogni-
tion of meaning the methods of the natural sciences are
inappropriate.

Ideas influence one another, they provide stimulation
for the emergence of new ideas, they supersede or trans-
form other ideas. All that materialism could offer for the
treatment of these phenomena is a metaphorical refer-
ence to the notion of contagion. The comparison is
superficial and does not explain anything. Diseases are
communicated from body to body through the migra-
tions of germs and viruses. Nobody knows anything
about the migration of a factor that would transmit
thoughts from man to man.

3. The Political Implications of Materialism

Materialism originated as a reaction against a pri-
meval dualistic interpretation of man's being and es-
sential nature. In the light of these beliefs, living man
was a compound of two separable parts: a mortal body
and an immortal soul. Death severed these two parts.
The soul moved out of sight of the living and continued
a shadow-like existence beyond the reach of earthly
powers in the realm of the deceased. In exceptional
cases it was permitted to a soul to reappear for a while
in the sensible world of the living or for a still living
man to pay a short visit to the fields of the dead.

These rather crude representations have been sub-
limated by religious doctrines and by idealistic philos-

100 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

ophy. While the primitive descriptions of a realm of
souls and the activities of its inhabitants cannot bear
critical examination and can easily be exposed to ridi-
cule, it is impossible both for aprioristic reasoning and
for the natural sciences to refute cogently the refined
tenets of religious creeds. History can explode many of
the historical narrations of theological literature. But
higher criticism does not affect the core of the faith. Rea-
son can neither prove nor disprove the essential religious
doctrines.

But materialism as it had developed in eighteenth-
century France was not merely a scientific doctrine. It
was also a part of the vocabulary of the reformers who
fought the abuses of the ancien regime. The prelates of
the Church in royal France were with few exceptions
members of the aristocracy. Most of them were more
interested in court intrigues than in the performance
of their ecclesiastical duties. Their well-deserved un-
popularity made antireligious tendencies popular.

The debates on materialism would have subsided
about the middle of the nineteenth century if no polit-
ical issues had been involved. People would have real-
ized that contemporary science has not contributed any-
thing to the elucidation or analysis of the physiological
processes that generate definite ideas and that it is
doubtful whether future scientists will succeed better
in this task. The materialist dogma would have been re-
garded as a conjecture about a problem whose satis-
factory solution seemed, at least for the time being,
beyond the reach of man's search for knowledge. Its
supporters would no longer have been in a position to

MATERIALISM 101

consider it an irrefutable scientific truth and would not
have been permitted to accuse its critics of obscur-
antism, ignorance, and superstition. Agnosticism would
have replaced materialism.

But in most of the European and Latin American
countries Christian churches cooperated, at least to
some extent, with the forces that opposed representative
government and all institutions making for freedom. In
these countries one could hardly avoid attacking re-
ligion if one aimed at the realization of a program that
by and large corresponded with the ideals of Jefferson
and of Lincoln. The political implications of the ma-
terialism controversy prevented its fading away.
Prompted not by epistemological, philosophical, or sci-
entific considerations but by purely political reasons,
a desperate attempt was made to salvage the politically
very convenient slogan "materialism." While the type
of materialism that flourished until the middle of the
nineteenth century receded into the background, gave
way to agnosticism, and could not be regenerated by
such rather crude and naive writings as those of
Haeckel, a new type was developed by Karl Marx under
the name of dialectical materialism.

Chapter 7. Dialectical Materialism

1. Dialectics and Marxism

Dialectical materialism as taught by Karl Marx
and Frederick Engels is the most popular metaphysical
doctrine of our age. It is today the official philosophy
of the Soviet empire and of all the schools of Marxism
outside of this empire. It dominates the ideas of many
people who do not consider themselves Marxians and
even of many authors and parties who believe they are
anti-Marxians and anti-communists. It is this doctrine
which most of our contemporaries have in mind when
they refer to materialism and determinism.

When Marx was a young man, two metaphysical doc-
trines whose teachings were incompatible with one an-
other dominated German thought. One was Hegelian
spiritualism, the official doctrine of the Prussian state
and of the Prussian universities. The other was material-
ism, the doctrine of the opposition bent upon a revolu-
tionary overthrow of the political system of Metternich
and of Christian orthodoxy as well as of private prop-
erty. Marx tried to blend the two into a compound in
order to prove that socialism is bound to come "with the
inexorability of a law of nature."

In the philosophy of Hegel logic, metaphysics, and
ontology are essentially identical. The process of real

102

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM 103

becoming is an aspect of the logical process of thinking.
In grasping the laws of logic by aprioristic thinking, the
mind acquires correct knowledge of reality. There is
no road to truth but that provided by the study of logic.

The peculiar principle of Hegel's logic is the dialectic
method. Thinking takes a triadic way. It proceeds from
thesis to antithesis, i.e., the negation of the thesis, and
from antithesis to synthesis, i.e., the negation of the
negation. The same trinal principle of thesis, antithesis,
and synthesis manifests itself in real becoming. For the
only real thing in the universe is Geist (mind or spirit).
Matter has its substance not in itself. Natural things are
not for themselves (fiir sich selber). But Geist is for
itself. What — apart from reason and divine action — is
called reality is, viewed in the light of philosophy, some-
thing rotten or inert (ein Faules) which may seem but
is not in itself real. 1

No compromise is possible between this Hegelian
idealism and any kind of materialism. Yet, fascinated
by the prestige Hegelianism enjoyed in the Germany of
the 1840's, Marx and Engels were afraid to deviate too
radically from the only philosophical system with which
they and their contemporary countrymen were familiar.
They were not audacious enough to discard Hegelian-
ism entirely as was done a few years later even in Prus-
sia. They preferred to appear as continuators and re-
formers of Hegel, not as iconoclastic dissenters. They
boasted of having transformed and improved Hegelian
dialectics, of having turned it upside down, or rather,

1. See Hegel, Vorlenmgen liber die Philosophic der Weltge-
schichte, ed. Lasson (Leipzig, 1917), pp. 31-4, 55.

104 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

of having put it on its feet. 2 They did not realize that
it was nonsensical to uproot dialectics from its idealistic
ground and transplant it to a system that was labeled
materialistic and empirical. Hegel was consistent in
assuming that the logical process is faithfully reflected
in the processes going on in what is commonly called
reality. He did not contradict himself in applying the
logical apriori to the interpretation of the universe. But
it is different with a doctrine that indulges in a naive
realism, materialism, and empiricism. Such a doctrine
ought to have no use for a scheme of interpretation that
is derived not from experience but from apriori reason-
ing. Engels declared that dialectics is the science of the
general laws of motion, of the external world as well as
of human thinking; two series of laws which are sub-
stantially identical but in their manifestation different
insofar as the human mind can apply them consciously,
while in nature, and hitherto also to a great extent in
human history, they assert themselves in an uncon-
scious way as external necessity in the midst of an in-
finite series of apparently contingent events. 3 He him-
self, says Engels, had never had any doubts about this.
His intensive preoccupation with mathematics and the
natural sciences, to which he confesses to have devoted
the greater part of eight years, was, he declares, obvi-
ously prompted only by the desire to test the validity
of the laws of dialectics in detail in specific instances. 4

2. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach und der Ausgang der fdassischen
deutschen Philosophie (5th ed. Stuttgart, 1910), pp. 36-9.

3. Ibid., p. 38.

4. Preface, Engels, Herm Eugen Diihrings Umwdlzung der Wissen-
schaft (7th ed. Stuttgart, 1910), pp. xiv and xv.

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM 105

These studies led Engels to startling discoveries. Thus
he found that "the whole of geology is a series of ne-
gated negations." Butterflies "come into existence from
the egg through negation of the egg . . . they are ne-
gated again as they die," and so on. The normal life of
barley is this: "The barleycorn ... is negated and is
supplanted by the barley plant, the negation of the
corn. . . . The plant grows ... is fructified and pro-
duces again barleycorns and as soon as these are ripe,
the ear withers away, is negated. As a result of this ne-
gation of the negation we have again the original bar-
leycorn, however not plainly single but in a quantity
ten, twenty, or thirty times larger." B

It did not occur to Engels that he was merely playing
with words. It is a gratuitous pastime to apply the
terminology of logic to the phenomena of reality. Propo-
sitions about phenomena, events, and facts can be af-
firmed or negated, but not the phenomena, events, and
facts themselves. But if one is committed to such inap-
propriate and logically vicious metaphorical language,
it is not less sensible to call the butterfly the affirmation
of the egg than to call it its negation. Is not the emer-
gence of the butterfly the self-assertion of the egg, the
maturing of its inherent purpose, the perfection of its
merely passing existence, the fulfillment of all its po-
tentialities? Engels' method consisted in substituting
the term "negation" for the term "change." There is,
however, no need to dwell longer upon the fallacy of
integrating Hegelian dialectics into a philosophy that
does not endorse Hegel's fundamental principle, the

5. Ibid., pp. 138-9.

106 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

identity of logic and ontology, and does not radically
reject the idea that anything could be learned from ex-
perience. For in fact dialectics plays a merely orna-
mental part in the constructions of Marx and Engels
without substantially influencing the course of reason-
ing. 8

2. The Material Productive Forces

The essential concept of Marxian materialism is "the
material productive forces of society." These forces are
the driving power producing all historical facts and
changes. In the social production of their subsistence,
men enter into certain relations — production relations
— which are necessary and independent of their will
and correspond to the prevailing stage of development
of the material productive forces. The totality of these
production relations forms "the economic structure of
society, the real basis upon which there arises a juridical
and political superstructure and to which definite forms
of social consciousness correspond." The mode of pro-
duction of material life conditions the social, political,
and spiritual (intellectual) life process in general (in
each of its manifestations). It is not the consciousness
(the ideas and thoughts) of men that determines their
being (existence) but, on the contrary, their social
being that determines their consciousness. At a certain
stage of their development the material productive
forces of society come into contradiction with the exist-

6. E. Hammacher, Das philosophisch-dkonomische System des
Marxismus (Leipzig, 1909), pp. 506-11.

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM 107

ing production relations, or, what is merely a juridical
expression for them, with the property relations (the
social system of property laws) within the frame of
which they have hitherto operated. From having been
forms of development of the productive forces these re-
lations turn into fetters of them. Then comes an epoch
of social revolution. With the change in the economic
foundation the whole immense superstructure slowly or
rapidly transforms * itself. In reviewing such a trans-
formation, 1 one must always distinguish between the
material transformation l of the economic conditions of
production, which can be precisely ascertained with the
methods of the natural sciences, and the juridical, po-
litical, religious, artistic, 2 or philosophical, in short ide-
ological, forms in which men become conscious (aware)
of this conflict and fight it out. Such an epoch of trans-
formation can no more be judged according to its own
consciousness than an individual can be judged accord-
ing to what he imagines himself to be; one must rather
explain this consciousness out of the contradictions of
the material life, out of the existing conflict between so-
cial productive forces and production relations. No so-
cial formation ever disappears before all the productive
forces have been developed for which its frame is broad
enough, and new, higher production relations never ap-
pear before the material conditions of their existence
have been hatched out in the womb of the old society.

1. The term used by Marx, umwalzen, UmwiUzung, is the German-
language equivalent of "revolution."

2. The German term Kuntt includes all branches of poetry, fiction,
and playwriting.

108 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

Hence mankind never sets itself tasks other than those it
can solve, for closer observation will always discover
that the task itself only emerges where the material con-
ditions of its solution are already present or at least in
the process of becoming. 3

The most remarkable fact about this doctrine is that
it does not provide a definition of its basic concept, ma-
terial productive forces. Marx never told us what he had
in mind in referring to the material productive forces.
We have to deduce it from occasional historical exem-
plifications of his doctrine. The most outspoken of these
incidental examples is to be found in his book, The Pov-
erty of Philosophy, published in 1847 in French. It
reads: The hand mill gives you feudal society, the steam
mill industrial capitalism. 4 This means that the state of
practical technological knowledge or the technological
quality of the tools and machines used in production is
to be considered the essential feature of the material
productive forces, which uniquely determine the pro-
duction relations and thereby the whole "superstruc-
ture." The production technique is the real thing, the
material being that ultimately determines the social,
political, and intellectual manifestations of human life.
This interpretation is fully confirmed by all other ex-
amples provided by Marx and Engels and by the re-
sponse every new technological advance roused in their
minds. They welcomed it enthusiastically because they

3. K. Marx, Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie, ed. Kautsky
(Stuttgart, 1897), Preface, pp. x-xii.

4. "Lie moulin a bras vous donnera la society avec le souzerain; le
moulin a vapeur, la societe avec le capitalize industriel." Marx, La
Misire de la phUosophie (Paris and Brussels, 1847), p. 100.

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM 109

were convinced that each such new invention brought
them a step nearer the realization of their hopes, the
coming of socialism. 8

There have been, before Marx and after Marx, many
historians and philosophers who emphasized the promi-
nent role the improvement of technological methods of
production has played in the history of civilization. A
glance into the popular textbooks of history published
in the last one hundred and fifty years shows that their
authors duly stressed the importance of new inventions
and of the changes they brought about. They never con-
tested the truism that material well-being is the indis-
pensable condition of a nation's moral, intellectual, and
artistic achievement.

But what Marx says is entirely different. In his doc-
trine the tools and machines are the ultimate thing, a
material thing, viz., the material productive forces.
Everything else is the necessary superstructure of this
material basis. This fundamental thesis is open to three
irrefutable objections.

First, a technological invention is not something ma-
terial. It is the product of a mental process, of reason-
ing and conceiving new ideas. The tools and machines
may be called material, but the operation of the mind
which created them is certainly spiritual. Marxian ma-
terialism does not trace back "superstructural" and

5. Marx and some of his followers at times also included natural re-
sources in the notion of material productive forces. But these remarks
were made only incidentally and were never elaborated, obviously
because this would have led them into the doctrine that explains
history as determined by the structure of the people's geographical
environment.

110 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

"ideological" phenomena to "material" roots. It explains
these phenomena as caused by an essentially mental
process, viz., invention. It assigns to this mental process,
which it falsely labels an original, nature-given, mate-
rial fact, the exclusive power to beget all other social
and intellectual phenomena. But it does not attempt to
explain how inventions come to pass.

Second, mere invention and designing of technologi-
cally new implements are not sufficient to produce
them. What is required, in addition to technological
knowledge and planning, is capital previously accumu-
lated out of saving. Every step forward on the road to-
ward technological improvement presupposes the re-
quisite capital. The nations today called underdeveloped
know what is needed to improve their backward ap-
paratus of production. Plans for the construction of all
the machines they want to acquire are ready or could
be completed in a very short time. Only lack of capital
holds them up. But saving and capital accumulation
presuppose a social structure in which it is possible to
save and to invest. The production relations are thus
not the product of the material productive forces but,
on the contrary, the indispensable condition of their
coming into existence.

Marx, of course, cannot help admitting that capital
accumulation is "one of the most indispensable condi-
tions for the evolution of industrial production." 6 Part
of his most voluminous treatise, Das Kapital, provides

6. Marx, La Misire de la phUosophie, English trans., The Poverty
of Philosophy (New York, International Publishers, n.d.), p. 115.

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM 111

a history — wholly distorted — of capital accumulation.
But as soon as he comes to his doctrine of materialism,
he forgets all he said about this subject. Then the tools
and machines are created by spontaneous generation,
as it were.

Furthermore it must be remembered that the utiliza-
tion of machines presupposes social cooperation under
the division of labor. No machine can be constructed
and put into use under conditions in which there is no
division of labor at all or only a rudimentary stage of it.
Division of labor means social cooperation, i.e., social
bonds between men, society. How then is it possible to
explain the existence of society by tracing it back to the
material productive forces which themselves can only
appear in the frame of a previously existing social
nexus? Marx could not comprehend this problem. He
accused Proudhon, who had described the use of ma-
chines as a consequence of the division of labor, of ig-
norance of history. It is a distortion of fact, he shouted,
to start with the division of labor and to deal with ma-
chines only later. For the machines are "a productive
force," not a "social production relation," not an "eco-
nomic category." 7 Here we are faced with a stubborn
dogmatism that does not shrink from any absurdity.

We may summarize the Marxian doctrine in this way:
In the beginning there are the "material productive
forces," i.e., the technological equipment of human pro-
ductive efforts, the tools and machines. No question
concerning their origin is permitted; they are, that is

7. Ibid., pp. 112-13.

112 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

all; we must assume that they are dropped from heaven.
These material productive forces compel men to enter
into definite production relations which are independ-
ent of their wills. These production relations farther on
determine society's juridical and political superstruc-
ture as well as all religious, artistic, and philosophical
ideas.

3. The Class Struggle

As will be pointed out below, any philosophy of his-
tory must demonstrate the mechanism by means of
which the supreme agency that directs the course of all
human affairs induces individuals to walk in precisely
the ways which are bound to lead mankind toward the
goal set. In Marx's system the doctrine of the class strug-
gle is designed to answer this question.

The inherent weakness of this doctrine is that it deals
with classes and not with individuals. What has to be
shown is how the individuals are induced to act in such
a way that mankind finally reaches the point the pro-
ductive forces want it to attain. Marx answers that con-
sciousness of the interests of their class determines the
conduct of the individuals. It still remains to be ex-
plained why the individuals give the interests of their
class preference over their own interests. We may for
the moment refrain from asking how the individual
learns what the genuine interests of his class are. But
even Marx cannot help admitting that a conflict exists
between the interests of an individual and those of the

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM 113

class to which he belongs. 1 He distinguishes between
those proletarians who are class conscious, i.e., place
the concerns of their class before their individual con-
cerns, and those who are not. He considers it one of the
objectives of a socialist party to awake to class con-
sciousness those proletarians who are not spontaneously
class conscious.

Marx obfuscated the problem by confusing the no-
tions of caste and class. Where status and caste differ-
ences prevail, all members of every caste but the most
privileged have one interest in common, viz., to wipe
out the legal disabilities of their own caste. All slaves,
for instance, are united in having a stake in the aboli-
tion of slavery. But no such conflicts are present in a
society in which all citizens are equal before the law.
No logical objection can be advanced against distin-
guishing various classes among the members of such a
society. Any classification is logically permissible, how-
ever arbitrarily the mark of distinction may be chosen.
But it is nonsensical to classify the members of a capi-
talistic society according to their position in the frame-
work of the social division of labor and then to identify
these classes with the castes of a status society.

In a status society the individual inherits his caste
membership from his parents, he remains through all his
life in his caste, and his children are born as members

1. Thus we read in the Communist Manifesto: "The organization
of the proletarians into a class, and consequently into a political party,
is at every instant again shattered by the competition between the
workers themselves."

114 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

of it. Only in exceptional cases can good luck raise a
man into a higher caste. For the immense majority birth
unalterably determines their station in life. The classes
which Marx distinguishes in a capitalistic society are
different. Their membership is fluctuating. Class affilia-
tion is not hereditary. It is assigned to each individual
by a daily repeated plebiscite, as it were, of all the
people. The public in spending and buying determines
who should own and run the plants, who should play
the parts in the theater performances, who should work
in the factories and mines. Rich men become poor, and
poor men rich. The heirs as well as those who them-
selves have acquired wealth must try to hold their own
by defending their assets against the competition of
already established firms and of ambitious newcomers.
In the unhampered market economy there are no privi-
leges, no protection of vested interests, no barriers pre-
venting anybody from striving after any prize. Access
to any of the Marxian classes is free to everybody. The
members of each class compete with one another; they
are not united by a common class interest and not op-
posed to the members of other classes by being allied
either in the defense of a common privilege which those
wronged by it want to see abolished or in the attempt
to abolish an institutional disability which those deriv-
ing advantage from it want to preserve.

The laissez-faire liberals asserted: If the old laws es-
tablishing status privileges and disabilities are repealed
and no new practices of the same character — such as
tariffs, subsidies, discriminatory taxation, indulgence
granted for nongovernmental agencies like churches,

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM 115

unions, and so on to use coercion and intimidation — are
introduced, there is equality of all citizens before the
law. Nobody is hampered in his aspirations and ambi-
tions by any legal obstacles. Everybody is free to com-
pete for any social position or function for which his
personal abilities qualify him.

The communists denied that this is the way capital-
istic society as organized under the liberal system of
equality before the law, is operating. In their eyes pri-
vate ownership of the means of production conveys to
the owners — the bourgeois or capitalists in Marx's ter-
minology — a privilege virtually not different from those
once accorded to the feudal lords. The "bourgeois revo-
lution" has not abolished privilege and discrimination
against the masses; it has, says the Marxian, merely sup-
planted the old ruling and exploiting class of noblemen
by a new ruling and exploiting class, the bourgeoisie.
The exploited class, the proletarians, did not profit from
this reform. They have changed masters but they have
remained oppressed and exploited. What is needed is
a new and final revolution, which in abolishing private
ownership of the means of production will establish the
classless society.

This socialist or communist doctrine fails entirely to
take into account the essential difference between the
conditions of a status or caste society and those of a
capitalistic society. Feudal property came into existence
either by conquest or by donation on the part of a con-
queror. It came to an end either by revocation of the
donation or by conquest on the part of a more powerful
conqueror. It was property by "the grace of God," be-

116 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

cause it was ultimately derived from military victory
which the humility or conceit of the princes ascribed to
special intervention of the Lord. The owners of feudal
property did not depend on the market, they did not
serve the consumers; within the range of their property
rights they were real lords. But it is quite different with
the capitalists and entrepreneurs of a market economy.
They acquire and enlarge their property through the
services they have rendered to the consumers, and they
can retain it only by serving daily again in the best pos-
sible way. This difference is not eradicated by meta-
phorically calling a successful manufacturer of spa-
ghetti "the spaghetti king."

Marx never embarked on the hopeless task of refut-
ing the economists' description of the working of the
market economy. Instead he was eager to show that
capitalism must in the future lead to very unsatisfactory
conditions. He undertook to demonstrate that the oper-
ation of capitalism must inevitably result in the con-
centration of wealth in the possession of an ever dimin-
ishing number of capitalists on the one hand and in the
progressive impoverishment of the immense majority
on the other hand. In the execution of this task he
started from the spurious iron law of wages according
to which the average wage rate is that quantum of the
means of subsistence which is absolutely required to
enable the laborer to barely survive and to rear prog-
eny. 2 This alleged law has long since been entirely dis-

2. Of course, Marx did not like the German term "das eheme
Lohngesetz" because it had been devised by his rival Ferdinand
Lassalle.

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM 117

credited, and even the most bigoted Marxians have
dropped it. But even if one were prepared for the sake
of argument to call the law correct, it is obvious that it
can by no means serve as the basis of a demonstration
that the evolution of capitalism leads to progressive im-
poverishment of the wage earners. If wage rates under
capitalism are always so low that for physiological
reasons they cannot drop any further without wiping
out the whole class of wage earners, it is impossible to
maintain the thesis of the Communist Manifesto that
the laborer "sinks deeper and deeper" with the progress
of industry. Like all Marx's other arguments this dem-
onstration is contradictory and self-defeating. Marx
boasted of having discovered the immanent laws of cap-
italist evolution. The most important of these laws he
considered the law of progressive impoverishment of
the wage-earning masses. It is the operation of this law
that brings about the final collapse of capitalism and
the emergence of socialism. 3 When this law is seen to
be spurious, the foundation is pulled from under both
Marx's system of economics and his theory of capitalist
evolution.

Incidentally we have to establish the fact that in cap-
italistic countries the standard of living of the wage
earners has improved in an unprecedented and un-
dreamt-of way since the publication of the Communist
Manifesto and the first volume of Das Kapital. Marx
misrepresented the operation of the capitalist system
in every respect.

The corollary of the alleged progressive impoverish-

3. Marx, Das Kapital, 1, 728.

118 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

ment of the wage earners is the concentration of all
riches in the hands of a class of capitalist exploiters
whose membership is continually shrinking. In dealing
with this issue Marx failed to take into account the fact
that the evolution of big business units does not neces-
sarily involve the concentration of wealth in a few
hands. The big business enterprises are almost without
exception corporations, precisely because they are too
big for single individuals to own them entirely. The
growth of business units has far outstripped the growth
of individual fortunes. The assets of a corporation are
not identical with the wealth of its shareholders. A con-
siderable part of these assets, the equivalent of pre-
ferred stock and bonds issued and of loans raised, be-
long virtually, if not in the sense of the legal concept of
ownership, to other people, viz., to owners of bonds and
preferred stock and to creditors. Where these securities
are held by savings banks and insurance companies and
these loans were granted by such banks and companies,
the virtual owners are the people who have claims
against them. Also the common stock of a corporation
is as a rule not concentrated in the hands of one man.
The bigger the corporation, as a rule, the more widely
its shares are distributed.

Capitalism is essentially mass production to fill the
needs of the masses. But Marx always labored under the
deceptive conception that the workers are toiling for the
sole benefit of an upper class of idle parasites. He did
not see that the workers themselves consume by far the
greater part of all the consumers' goods turned out. The
millionaires consume an almost negligible part of what

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM 119

is called the national product. All branches of big busi-
ness cater directly or indirectly to the needs of the com-
mon man. The luxury industries never develop beyond
small-scale or medium-size units. The evolution of big
business is in itself proof of the fact that the masses and
not the nabobs are the main consumers. Those who deal
with the phenomenon of big business under the rubric
"concentration of economic power" fail to realize that
economic power is vested in the buying public on whose
patronage the prosperity of the factories depends. In
his capacity as buyer, the wage earner is the customer
who is "always right." But Marx declares that the bour-
geoisie "is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave
within his slavery."

Marx deduced the excellence of socialism from the
fact that the driving force of historical evolution, the
material productive forces, is bound to bring about so-
cialism. As he was engrossed in the Hegelian brand of
optimism, there was to his mind no further need to
demonstrate the merits of socialism. It was obvious to
him that socialism, being a later stage of history than
capitalism, was also a better stage. 4 It was sheer blas-
phemy to doubt its merits.

What was still left to show was the mechanism by
means of which nature brings about the transition from
capitalism to socialism. Nature's instrument is the class
struggle. As the workers sink deeper and deeper with
the progress of capitalism, as their misery, oppression,
slavery, and degradation increase, they are driven to
revolt, and their rebellion establishes socialism.

4. On the fallacy implied in this reasoning, see below pp. 175 ff.

120 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

The whole chain of this reasoning is exploded by the
establishment of the fact that the progress of capitalism
does not pauperize the wage earners increasingly but
on the contrary improves their standard of living. Why
should the masses be inevitably driven to revolt when
they get more and better food, housing and clothing,
cars and refrigerators, radio and television sets, nylon
and other synthetic products? Even if, for the sake of
argument, we were to admit that the workers are driven
to rebellion, why should their revolutionary upheaval
aim just at the establishment of socialism? The only mo-
tive which could induce them to ask for socialism would
be the conviction that they themselves would fare
better under socialism than under capitalism. But Marx-
ists, anxious to avoid dealing with the economic prob-
lems of a socialist commonwealth, did nothing to dem-
onstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism
apart from the circular reasoning that runs: Socialism
is bound to come as the next stage of historical evolu-
tion. Being a later stage of history than capitalism, it is
necessarily higher and better than capitalism. Why is
it bound to come? Because the laborers, doomed to pro-
gressive impoverishment under capitalism, will rebel
and establish socialism. But what other motive could
impel them to aim at the establishment of socialism
than the conviction that socialism is better than capital-
ism? And this pre-eminence of socialism is deduced by
Marx from the fact that the coming of socialism is in-
evitable. The circle is closed.

In the context of the Marxian doctrine the superiority
of socialism is proved by the fact that the proletarians
are aiming at socialism. What the philosophers, the

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM 121

Utopians, think does not count. What matters is the
ideas of the proletarians, the class that history has en-
trusted with the task of shaping the future.

The truth is that the concept of socialism did not
originate from the "proletarian mind." No proletarian
or son of a proletarian contributed any substantial idea
to the socialist ideology. The intellectual fathers of so-
cialism were members of the intelligentsia, scions of
the "bourgeoisie." Marx himself was the son of a well-
to-do lawyer. He attended a German Gymnasium, the
school all Marxians and other socialists denounce as the
main offshoot of the bourgeois system of education, and
his family supported him through all the years of his
studies; he did not work his way through the university.
He married the daughter of a member of the German
nobility; his brother-in-law was Prussian minister of
the interior and as such head of the Prussian police. In
his household served a maid, Helene Demuth, who
never married and who followed the Marx menage in
all its shifts of residence, the perfect model of the ex-
ploited slavey whose frustration and stunted sex life
have been repeatedly depicted in the German "social"
novel. Friedrich Engels was the son of a wealthy manu-
facturer and himself a manufacturer; he refused to
marry his mistress Mary because she was uneducated
and of "low" descent; 5 he enjoyed the amusements of
the British gentry such as riding to hounds.

The workers were never enthusiastic about socialism.

5. After the death of Mary, Engels took her sister Lizzy as mistress.
He married her on her deathbed "in order to provide her a last pleas-
tire." Gustav Mayer, Frederick Engels (The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff,
1934), 2, 329.

122 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

They supported the union movement whose striving
after higher wages Marx despised as useless. 6 They
asked for all those measures of government interference
with business which Marx branded petty-bourgeois
nonsense. They opposed technological improvement, in
earlier days by destroying new machines, later by union
pressure and compulsion in favor of feather-bedding.
Syndicalism — appropriation of the enterprises by the
workers employed in them — is a program that the work-
ers developed spontaneously. But socialism was brought
to the masses by intellectuals of bourgeois background.
Dining and wining together in the luxurious London
homes and country seats of late Victorian "society," la-
dies and gentlemen in fashionable evening clothes con-
cocted schemes for converting the British proletarians
to the socialist creed.

4. The Ideological Impregnation of Thought

From the supposed irreconcilable conflict of class in-
terests Marx deduces his doctrine of the ideological im-
pregnation of thought. In a class society man is inher-
ently unfit to conceive theories which are a substantially
true description of reality. As his class affiliation, his
social being, determines his thoughts, the products of
his intellectual effort are ideologically tainted and dis-
torted. They are not truth, but ideologies. An ideology
in the Marxian sense of the term is a false doctrine
which, however, precisely on account of its falsity,

6. Marx, Value, Price and Profit, ed. E. Marx Aveling (Chicago,
Charles H. Kerr & Co. Cooperative), pp. 125-6. See below p. 137.

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM 123

serves the interests of the class from which its author
stems.

We may omit here dealing with many aspects of this
ideology doctrine. We need not disprove anew the doc-
trine of polylogism, according to which the logical
structure of mind differs in the members of various
classes. 1 We may furthermore admit that the main con-
cern of a thinker is exclusively to promote the interests
of his class even if these clash with his interests as an
individual. We may finally abstain from questioning the
dogma that there is no such thing as the disinterested
search for truth and knowledge and that all human in-
quiry is exclusively guided by the practical purpose of
providing mental tools for successful action. The ide-
ology doctrine would remain untenable even if all the
irrefutable objections that can be raised from the point
of view of these three aspects could be rejected.

Whatever one may think of the adequacy of the prag-
matist definition of truth, it is obvious that at least one
of the characteristic marks of a true theory is that action
based on it succeeds it attaining the expected result. In
this sense truth works, while untruth does not work.
Precisely if we assume, in agreement with the Marxians,
that the end of theorizing is always success in action,
the question must be raised why and how an ideological
( that is, in the Marxian sense, a false ) theory should be
more useful to a class than a correct theory? There is no
doubt that the study of mechanics was motivated, at
least to some extent, by practical considerations. Peo-
ple wanted to make use of the theorems of mechanics to

1. Mises, Human Action, pp. 72-91.

124 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

solve various problems of engineering. It was precisely
the pursuit of these practical results that impelled them
to search for a correct, not for a merely ideological
(false) science of mechanics. No matter how one looks
at it, there is no way in which a false theory can serve
a man or a class or the whole of mankind better than a
correct theory. How did Marx come to teach such a
doctrine?

To answer this question we must remember the mo-
tive that impelled Marx to all his literary ventures. He
was driven by one passion — to fight for the adoption of
socialism. But he was fully aware of his inability to op-
pose any tenable objection to the economists' devastat-
ing criticism of all socialist plans. He was convinced
that the system of economic doctrine developed by the
Classical economists was impregnable, and remained
unaware of the serious doubts which essential theorems
of this system had already raised in some minds. Like
his contemporary John Stuart Mill he believed "there is
nothing in the laws of value which remains for the
present or any future writer to clear up; the theory of
the subject is complete." 2 When in 1871 the writings of
Carl Menger and William Stanley Jevons inaugurated
a new epoch of economic studies, Marx's career as a
writer on economic problems had already come to a
virtual end. The first volume of Das Kapital had been
published in 1867; the manuscript of the following vol-
umes was well along. There is no indication that Marx
ever grasped the meaning of the new theory. Marx's
economic teachings are essentially a garbled rehash of

2. Mill, Principles of Political Economy, Bk. Ill, ch. 1, § 1.

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM 125

the theories of Adam Smith and, first of all, of Ricardo.
Smith and Ricardo had not had any opportunity to re-
fute socialist doctrines, as these were advanced only
after their death. So Marx let them alone. But he vented
his full indignation upon their successors who had tried
to analyze the socialist schemes critically. He ridiculed
them, calling them "vulgar economists" and "sycophants
of the bourgeoisie." And as it was imperative for him to
defame them, he contrived his ideology scheme.

These "vulgar economists" are, because of their bour-
geois background, constitutionally unfit to discover
truth. What their reasoning produces can only be ideo-
logical, that is, as Marx employed the term "ideology,"
a distortion of truth serving the class interests of the
bourgeoisie. There is no need to refute their chains of
argument by discursive reasoning and critical analysis.
It is enough to unmask their bourgeois background and
thereby the necessarily "ideological" character of their
doctrines. They are wrong because they are bourgeois.
No proletarian must attach any importance to their
speculations.

To conceal the fact that this scheme was invented ex-
pressly to discredit the economists, it was necessary to
elevate it to the dignity of a general epistemological law
valid for all ages and for all branches of knowledge.
Thus the ideology doctrine became the nucleus of
Marxian epistemology. Marx and all his disciples con-
centrated their efforts upon the justification and ex-
emplification of this makeshift. They did not shrink
from any absurdity. They interpreted all philosophical
systems, physical and biological theories, all literature,

126 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

music, and art from the "ideological" point of view. But,
of course, they were not consistent enough to assign to
their own doctrines merely ideological character. The
Marxian tenets, they implied, are not ideologies. They
are a foretaste of the knowledge of the future classless
society which, freed from the fetters of class conflicts,
will be in a position to conceive pure knowledge, un-
tainted by ideological blemishes.

Thus we can understand the thymological motives
that led Marx to his ideology doctrine. Yet this does not
answer the question why an ideological distortion of
truth should be more advantageous to the interests of
a class than a correct doctrine. Marx never ventured to
explain this, probably aware that any attempt to would
entangle him in an inextricable jumble of absurdities
and contradictions.

There is no need to emphasize the ridiculousness of
contending that an ideological physical, chemical, or
therapeutical doctrine could be more advantageous for
any class or individual than a correct one. One may pass
over in silence the declarations of the Marxians con-
cerning the ideological character of the theories devel-
oped by the bourgeois Mendel, Hertz, Planck, Heisen-
berg, and Einstein. It is sufficient to scrutinize the al-
leged ideological character of bourgeois economics.

As Marx saw it, their bourgeois background impelled
the Classical economists to develop a system from
which a justification of the unfair claims of the capital-
ist exploiters must logically follow. ( In this he contra-
dicts himself, as he drew from the same system just the
opposite conclusions.) These theorems of the Classical

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM 127

economists from which the apparent justification of cap-
italism could be deduced were the theorems which
Marx attacked most furiously: that the scarcity of the
material factors of production on which man's well-
being depends is an inevitable, nature-given condition
of human existence; that no system of society's eco-
nomic organization could create a state of abundance
in which to everybody could be given according to his
needs; that the recurrence of periods of economic de-
pressions is not inherent in the very operation of an un-
hampered market economy but, on the contrary, the
necessary outcome of government's interfering with
business with the spurious aim of lowering the rate of
interest and making business boom by inflation and
credit expansion. But, we must ask, of what use, from
the very Marxian point of view, could such a justifica-
tion of capitalism be for the capitalists? They them-
selves did not need any justification for a system which
— according to Marx — while wronging the workers was
beneficial to themselves. They did not need to quiet
their own consciences since, again according to Marx,
every class is remorseless in the pursuit of its own self-
ish class interests.

Neither is it, from the point of view of the Marxian
doctrine, permissible to assume that the service which
the ideological theory, originating from a "false con-
sciousness" and therefore distorting the true state of af-
fairs, rendered to the exploiting class was to beguile the
exploited class and to make it pliable and subservient,
and thereby to preserve or at least to prolong the unfair
system of exploitation. For, according to Marx, the

128 DETEBMINISM AND MATERIALISM

duration of a definite system of production relations
does not depend on any spiritual factors. It is exclu-
sively determined by the state of the material produc-
tive forces. If the material productive forces change,
the production relations (i.e., the property relations)
and the whole ideological superstructure must change
too. This transformation cannot be accelerated by any
human effort. For as Marx said, "no social formation
ever disappears before all the productive forces are de-
veloped for which it is broad enough, and new higher
production relations never appear before the material
conditions of their existence have been hatched out in
the womb of the old society." 8

This is by no means merely an incidental observation
of Marx. It is one of the essential points of his doctrine.
It is the theorem on which he based his claim to call his
own doctrine scientific socialism as distinguished from
the merely Utopian socialism of his predecessors. The
characteristic mark of the Utopian socialists, as he saw
it, was that they believed that the realization of social-
ism depends on spiritual and intellectual factors. You
have to convince people that socialism is better than
capitalism and then they will substitute socialism for
capitalism. In Marx's eyes this Utopian creed was ab-
surd. The coming of socialism in no way depends on the
thoughts and wills of men; it is an outgrowth of the de-
velopment of the material productive forces. When the
time is fulfilled and capitalism has reached its maturity,
socialism will come. It can appear neither earlier nor

3. Marx, Zuf Kritik der politischen Oekonomie, p. xii (see above
pp. 107 f.).

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM 129

later. The bourgeois may contrive the most cleverly
elaborated ideologies — in vain; they cannot delay the
day of the breakdown of capitalism.

Perhaps some people, intent upon salvaging the
Marxian "ideology" concept, would argue this way: The
capitalists are ashamed of their role in society. They
feel guilty at being "robber barons, usurers, and ex-
ploiters" and pocketing profits. They need a class ide-
ology in order to restore their self-assertion. But why
should they blush? There is, from the point of view of
the Marxian doctrine, nothing in their conduct to be
ashamed of. Capitalism, in the Marxian view, is an in-
dispensable stage in the historical evolution of mankind.
It is a necessary link in the succession of events which
finally results in the bliss of socialism. The capitalists,
in being capitalists, are merely tools of history. They
execute what, according to the preordained plan for
mankind's evolution, must be done. They comply with
the eternal laws which are independent of the human
will. They cannot help acting the way they do. They do
not need any ideology, any "false consciousness," to tell
them that they are right. They are right in the light of
the Marxian doctrine. If Marx had been consistent, he
would have exhorted the workers: Don't blame the cap-
italists; in "exploiting" you they do what is best for your-
selves; they are paving the way for socialism.

However one may turn the matter, one cannot dis-
cover any reason why an ideological distortion of truth
should be more useful to the bourgeoisie than a correct
theory.

130 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

5. The Conflict of Ideologies

Class consciousness, says Marx, produces class ideolo-
gies. The class ideology provides the class with an inter-
pretation of reality and at the same time teaches the
members how to act in order to benefit their class. The
content of the class ideology is uniquely determined by
the historical stage of the development of the material
productive forces and by the role the class concerned
plays in this stage of history. The ideology is not an
arbitrary brain child. It is the reflection of the thinker s
material class condition as mirrored in his head. It is
therefore not an individual phenomenon conditional
upon the thinker's fancy. It is enjoined upon the mind
by reality, i.e., by the class situation of the man who
thinks. It is consequently identical with all members of
the class. Of course, not every class comrade is an au-
thor and publishes what he has thought. But all writers
belonging to the class conceive the same ideas and all
other members of the class approve of them. There is
no room left in Marxism for the assumption that the
various members of the same class could seriously dis-
agree in ideology. There exists for all members of the
class only one ideology.

If a man expresses opinions at variance with the ide-
ology of a definite class, that is because he does not be-
long to the class concerned. There is no need to refute
his ideas by discursive reasoning. It is enough to un-
mask his background and class affiliation. This settles
the matter.

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM 131

But if a man whose proletarian background and
membership in the workers' class cannot be contested
diverges from the correct Marxian creed, he is a traitor.
It is impossible to assume that he could be sincere in
his rejection of Marxism. As a proletarian he must nec-
essarily think like a proletarian. An inner voice tells him
in an unmistakable way what the correct proletarian
ideology is. He is dishonest in overriding this voice and
publicly professing unorthodox opinions. He is a rogue,
a Judas, a snake in the grass. In fighting such a betrayer
all means are permissible.

Marx and Engels, two men of unquestionable bour-
geois background, hatched out the class ideology of the
proletarian class. They never ventured to discuss their
doctrine with dissenters as scientists, for instance, dis-
cuss the pros and cons of the doctrines of Lamarck, Dar-
win, Mendel, and Weismann. As they saw it, their ad-
versaries could only be either bourgeois idiots 1 or pro-
letarian traitors. As soon as a socialist deviated an inch
from the orthodox creed, Marx and Engels attacked him
furiously, ridiculed and insulted him, represented him
as a scoundrel and a wicked and corrupt monster. After
Engels' death the office of supreme arbiter of what is
and what is not correct Marxism devolved upon Karl
Kautsky. In 1917 it passed into the hands of Lenin and
became a function of the chief of the Soviet govern-
ment. While Marx, Engels, and Kautsky had to content
themselves with assassinating the character of their op-

1. E.g., "bourgeois stupidity" (about Bentham, Das Kapital, 1,
574), "bourgeois cretinism" (about Destutt de Tracy, ibid., 2, 465),
and so on.

132 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

ponents, Lenin and Stalin could assassinate them physi-
cally. Step by step they anathematized those who once
were considered by all Marxians, including Lenin and
Stalin themselves, as the great champions of the prole-
tarian cause: Kautsky, Max Adler, Otto Bauer, Plechan-
off, Bukharin, Trotsky, Riasanov, Radek, Sinoviev, and
many others. Those whom they could seize were im-
prisoned, tortured, and finally murdered. Only those
who were happy enough to dwell in countries domi-
nated by "plutodemocratic reactionaries" survived and
were permitted to die in their beds.

A good case can be made, from the Marxian point of
view, in favor of decision by the majority. If a doubt
concerning the correct content of the proletarian ide-
ology arises, the ideas held by the majority of the pro-
letarians are to be considered those which truthfully
reflect the genuine proletarian ideology. As Marxism
supposes that the immense majority of people are pro-
letarians, this would be tantamount to assigning the
competence to make the ultimate decisions in conflicts
of opinion to parliaments elected under adult franchise.
But although to refuse to do this is to explode the whole
ideology doctrine, neither Marx nor his successors were
ever prepared to submit their opinions to majority vote.
Throughout his career Marx mistrusted the people and
was highly suspicious of parliamentary procedures and
decisions by the ballot. He was enthusiastic about the
Paris revolution of June 1848, in which a small minority
of Parisians rebelled against the government supported
by a parliament elected under universal manhood suf-
frage. The Paris Commune of the spring of 1871, in
which again Parisian socialists fought against the re-

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM 133

gime duly established by the overwhelming majority of
the French people's representatives, was still more to
his liking. Here he found his ideal of the dictatorship of
the proletariat, the dictatorship of a self-appointed band
of leaders, realized. He tried to persuade the Marxian
parties of all countries of Western and Central Europe
to base their hopes not upon election campaigns but
upon revolutionary methods. In this regard the Russian
communists were his faithful disciples. The Russian
parliament elected in 1917 under the auspices of the
Lenin government by all adult citizens had, in spite of
the violence offered to the voters by the ruling party,
less than 25 per cent communist members. Three-
quarters of the people had voted against the commu-
nists. But Lenin dispersed the parliament by force of
arms and firmly established the dictatorial rule of a
minority. The head of the Soviet power became the su-
preme pontiff of the Marxian sect. His title to this office
is derived from the fact that he had defeated his rivals
in a bloody civil war.

As the Marxians do not admit that differences of opin-
ion can be settled by discussion and persuasion or de-
cided by majority vote, no solution is open but civil
war. The mark of the good ideology, i.e., the ideology
adequate to the genuine class interests of the proletar-
ians, is the fact that its supporters succeeded in con-
quering and liquidating their opponents.

6. Ideas and Interests

Marx assumes tacitly that the social condition of a
class uniquely determines its interests and that there

134 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

can be no doubt what kind of policy best serves these
interests. The class does not have to choose between
various policies. The historical situation enjoins upon it
a definite policy. There is no alternative. It follows that
the class does not act, since acting implies choosing
among various possible ways of procedure. The mate-
rial productive forces act through the medium of the
class members.

But Marx, Engels, and all other Marxians ignored
this fundamental dogma of their creed as soon as they
stepped beyond the borders of epistemology and began
commenting upon historical and political issues. Then
they not only charged the nonproletarian classes with
hostility to the proletarians but criticized their policies
as not conducive to promoting the true interests of
their own classes.

The most important of Marx's political pamphlets is
the Address on the Civil War in France ( 1871 ) . It furi-
ously attacks the French government which, backed by
the immense majority of the nation, was intent upon
quelling the rebellion of the Paris Commune. It reck-
lessly calumniates all the leading members of that gov-
ernment, calling them swindlers, forgers, and embez-
zlers. Jules Favre, it charges, was "living in concubinage
with the wife of a dipsomaniac," and General de Gallif et
profited from the alleged prostitution of his wife. In
short, the pamphlet set the pattern for the defamation
tactics of the socialist press which the Marxians indig-
nantly chastised as one of the worst excrescences of cap-
italism when the tabloid press adopted it. Yet all these
slanderous lies, however reprehensible, may be inter-

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM 135

preted as partisan strategems in the implacable war
against bourgeois civilization. They are at least not in-
compatible with Marxian epistemological principles.
But it is another thing to question the expediency of the
bourgeois policy from the standpoint of the class inter-
ests of the bourgeoisie. The Address maintains that the
policy of the French bourgeoisie has unmasked the es-
sential teachings of its own ideology, the only purpose
of which is "to delay the class struggle"; henceforth it
will no longer be possible for the class rule of the bour-
geoisie "to hide in a nationalist uniform." Henceforth
there will no longer be any question of peace or armis-
tice between the workers and their exploiters. The bat-
tle will be resumed again and again and there can be no
doubt about the final victory of the workingmen. 1

It must be noted that these observations were made
with regard to a situation in which the majority of the
French people had only to choose between uncondi-
tional surrender to a small minority of revolutionaries
or fighting them. Neither Marx nor anybody else had
ever expected that the majority of a nation would yield
without resistance to armed aggression on the part of
a minority.

Still more important is the fact that Marx in these
observations ascribes to the policies adopted by the
French bourgeoisie a decisive influence upon the course
of events. In this he contradicts all his other writings.
In the Communist Manifesto he had announced the im-
placable and relentless class struggle without any re-

1. Marx, Der Biirgerkrieg in Frankreich, ed. Pfemfert (Berlin,
1919), p. 7.

136 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

gard to the defense tactics the bourgeois may resort to.
He had deduced the inevitability of this struggle from
the class situation of the exploiters and that of the ex-
ploited. There is no room in the Marxian system for the
assumption that the policies adopted by the bourgeoisie
could in any way affect the emergence of the class strug-
gle and its outcome.

If it is true that one class, the French bourgeoisie of
1871, was in a position to choose between alternative
policies and through its decision to influence the course
of events, the same must be true also of other classes
in other historical situations. Then all the dogmas of
Marxian materialism are exploded. Then it is not true
that the class situation teaches a class what its genuine
class interests are and what kind of policy best serves
these interests. It is not true that only such ideas as are
conducive to the real interests of a class meet with ap-
proval on the part of those who direct the policies of
the class. It may happen that different ideas direct those
policies and thus get an influence upon the course of
events. But then it is not true that what counts in his-
tory are only interests, and that ideas are merely an
ideological superstructure, uniquely determined by
these interests. It becomes imperative to scrutinize
ideas in order to sift those which are really beneficial
to the interests of the class concerned from those which
are not. It becomes necessary to discuss conflicting
ideas with the methods of logical reasoning. The make-
shift by means of which Marx wanted to outlaw such
dispassionate weighing of the pros and cons of definite
ideas breaks down. The way toward an examination of

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM 137

the merits and demerits of socialism which Marx wanted
to prohibit as "unscientific" is reopened.

Another important address of Marx was his paper of
1865, Value, Price and Profit. In this document Marx
criticizes the traditional policies of the labor unions.
They should abandon their "conservative motto, A fair
day's wages for a fair day's work! and ought to inscribe
on their banner the revolutionary watchword, Aboli-
tion of the wages system!" 2 This is obviously a contro-
versy about which kind of policy best serves the class
interests of the workers. Marx in this case deviates from
his usual procedure of branding all his proletarian op-
ponents traitors. He implicitly admits that there can
prevail dissent even among honest and sincere cham-
pions of the class interests of the workers and that such
differences must be settled by debating the issue. Per-
haps on second thought he himself discovered that the
way he had dealt with the problem involved was incom-
patible with all his dogmas, for he did not have printed
this paper which he had read on June 26, 1865, in the
General Council of the International Workingmen's As-
sociation. It was first published in 1898 by one of his
daughters.

But the theme we are scrutinizing is not Marx's fail-
ure to cling consistently to his own doctrine and his
lapses into ways of thinking incompatible with it. We
have to examine the tenability of the Marxian doctrine
and must therefore turn to the peculiar connotation the
term "interests" has in the context of this doctrine.

Every individual, and for that matter every group of

2. Marx, Value, Price and Profit, pp. 126-7.

138 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

individuals, aims in acting at the substitution of a state
of affairs that suits him better for a state of affairs that
he considers less satisfactory. Without any regard to the
qualification of these two states of affairs from any other
point of view, we may say in this sense that he pursues
his own interests. But the question of what is more de-
sirable and what is less is decided by the acting indi-
vidual. It is the outcome of choosing among various
possible solutions. It is a judgment of value. It is de-
termined by the individual's ideas about the effects
these various states may have upon his own well-being.
But it ultimately depends upon the value he attaches to
these anticipated effects.

If we keep this in mind, it is not sensible to declare
that ideas are a product of interests. Ideas tell a man
what his interests are. At a later date, looking upon his
past actions, the individual may form the opinion that
he has erred and that another mode of acting would
have served his own interests better. But this does not
mean that at the critical instant in which he acted he
did not act according to his interests. He acted accord-
ing to what he, at that time, considered would serve
his interests best.

If an unaffected observer looks upon another man's
action, he may think: This fellow errs; what he does will
not serve what he considers to be his interest; another
way of acting would be more suitable for attaining the
ends he aims at. In this sense a historian can say today
or a judicious contemporary could say in 1939: In invad-
ing Poland Hitler and the Nazis made a mistake; the in-
vasion harmed what they considered to be their inter-

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM 139

ests. Such criticism is sensible so long as it deals only
with the means and not with the ultimate ends of an
action. The choice of ultimate ends is a judgment of
value solely dependent on the judging individual's valu-
ation. All that another man can say about it is: I would
have made a different choice. If a Roman had said to a
Christian doomed to be lacerated by wild beasts in the
circus: You will best serve your interests by bowing
down and worshiping the statue of our divine Emperor,
the Christian would have answered: My prime interest
is to comply with the precepts of my creed.

But Marxism, as a philosophy of history claiming to
know the ends which men are bound to aim at, em-
ploys the term "interests" with a different connotation.
The interests it refers to are not those chosen by men
on the ground of judgments of value. They are the ends
the material productive forces are aiming at. These
forces aim at the establishment of socialism. They use
the proletarians as a means for the realization of this
end. The superhuman material productive forces pur-
sue their own interests, independently of the will of
mortal men. The proletarian class is merely a tool in
their hands. The actions of the class are not its own ac-
tions but those which the material productive forces
perform in using the class as an instrument without a
will of its own. The class interests to which Marx re-
fers are in fact the interests of the material productive
forces which want to be freed from "the fetters upon
their development."

Interests of this kind, of course, do not depend upon
the ideas of ordinary men. They are determined exclu-

140 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

sively by the ideas of the man Marx, who generated
both the phantom of the material productive forces and
the anthropomorphic image of their interests.

In the world of reality, life, and human action there
is no such thing as interests independent of ideas, pre-
ceding them temporally and logically. What a man con-
siders his interest is the result of his ideas.

If there is any sense in the proposition that the inter-
ests of the proletarians would be best served by social-
ism, it is this: the ends which the individual proletarians
are aiming at will be best achieved by socialism. Such a
proposition requires proof. It is vain to substitute for
such a proof the recourse to an arbitrarily contrived sys-
tem of philosophy of history.

All this could never occur to Marx because he was
engrossed by the idea that human interests are uniquely
and entirely determined by the biological nature of the
human body. Man, as he saw it, is exclusively interested
in the procurement of the largest quantity of tangible
goods. There is no qualitative, only a quantitative, prob-
lem in the supply of goods and services. Wants do not
depend on ideas but solely on physiological conditions.
Blinded by this preconception, Marx ignored the fact
that one of the problems of production is to decide what
kind of goods are to be produced.

With animals and with primitive men on the verge of
starvation it is certainly true that nothing counts but
the quantity of edible things they can secure. There is
no need to point out that conditions are entirely differ-
ent for men, even for those in the earliest stages of civi-
lization. Civilized man is faced with the problem of

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM 141

choosing among the satisfactions of various needs and
among various modes of satisfying the same need. His
interests are diversified and are determined by the ideas
that influence his choosing. One does not serve the in-
terests of a man who wants a new coat by giving him a
pair of shoes or those of a man who wants to hear a
Beethoven symphony by giving him admission to a
boxing match. It is ideas that are responsible for the
fact that the interests of people are disparate.

Incidentally it may be mentioned that this miscon-
struing of human wants and interests prevented Marx
and other socialists from comprehending the distinction
between freedom and slavery, between the condition of
a man who himself decides how to spend his income and
that of a man whom a paternal authority supplies with
those things which, as the authority thinks, he needs.
In the market economy the consumers choose and
thereby determine the quantity and the quality of the
goods produced. Under socialism the authority takes
care of these matters. In the eyes of Marx and the Marx-
ians there is no substantial difference between these two
methods of want satisfaction; it is of no consequence
who chooses, the "paltry" individual for himself or the
authority for all its subjects. They fail to realize that the
authority does not give its wards what they want to get
but what, according to the opinion, of the authority,
they ought to get. If a man who wants to get the Bible
gets the Koran instead, he is no longer free.

But even if, for the sake of argument, we were to ad-
mit that there is uncertainty neither concerning the
kind of goods people are asking for nor concerning the

142 DETEBMINISM AND MATEBIALISM

most expedient technological methods of producing
them, there remains the conflict between interests in
the short run and those in the long run. Here again the
decision depends on ideas. It is judgments of value that
determine the amount of time preference attached to
the value of present goods as against that of future
goods. Should one consume or accumulate capital? And
how far should capital depletion or accumulation go?

Instead of dealing with all these problems Marx con-
tented himself with the dogma that socialism will be
an earthly paradise in which everybody will get all he
needs. Of course, if one starts from this dogma, one can
quietly declare that the interests of everybody, what-
ever they may be, will be best served under socialism.
In the land of Cockaigne people will no longer need any
ideas, will no longer have to resort to any judgments of
value, will no longer think and act. They will only open
their mouths to let the roast pigeons fly in.

In the world of reality, the conditions of which are
the only object of the scientific search for truth, ideas
determine what people consider to be their interests.
There is no such thing as interests that could be inde-
pendent of ideas. It is ideas that determine what people
consider as their interests. Free men do not act in ac-
cordance with their interests. They act in accordance
with what they believe furthers their interests.

7. The Class Interests of the Bourgeoisie

One of the starting points of the thinking of Karl
Marx was the dogma that capitalism, while utterly det-

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM 143

rimental to the working class, is favorable to the class
interests of the bourgeoisie and that socialism, while
thwarting only the unfair claims of the bourgeoisie, is
highly beneficial to the whole of mankind. These were
ideas developed by the French communists and social-
ists and disclosed to the German public in 1842 by
Lorenz von Stein in his voluminous book Socialism
and Communism in Present-Day France. Without any
qualms Marx adopted this doctrine and all that was im-
plied in it. It never occurred to him that its fundamental
dogma might require a demonstration, and the concepts
it employs a definition. He never defined the concepts
of a social class and of class interests and their conflicts.
He never explained why socialism serves the class inter-
ests of the proletarians and the true interests of the
whole of mankind better than any other system. This
attitude has been up to our time the characteristic mark
of all socialists. They simply take it for granted that life
under socialism will be blissful. Whoever dares to ask
for reasons is by this very demand unmasked as a bribed
apologist of the selfish class interests of the exploiters.

The Marxian philosophy of history teaches that what
brings about the coming of socialism is the operation of
the immanent laws of capitalistic production itself.
With the inexorability of a law of nature, capitalistic
production begets its own negation. 1 As no social forma-
tion ever disappears before all the productive forces are
developed for which it has room, 2 capitalism must run
its full course before the time comes for the emergence

1. Marx, Das Kapttal, 1, 728.

2. See above, pp. 107 and 128.

144 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

of socialism. The free evolution of capitalism, not upset
by any political interference, is therefore, from the
Marxian point of view, highly beneficial to the — we
would have to say "rightly understood" or long-term —
class interests of the proletarians. With the progress of
capitalism on the way to its maturity and consequently
to its collapse, says the Communist Manifesto, the la-
borer "sinks deeper and deeper," he "becomes a pau-
per." But seen sub specie aeternitatis, from the point
of view of mankind's destination and the long-run inter-
ests of the proletariat, this "mass of misery, oppression,
slavery, degradation, and exploitation" is in fact to be
regarded as a step forward on the road toward eternal
bliss. It appears therefore not only vain but manifestly
contrary to the — rightly understood — interests of the
working class to indulge in — necessarily futile — at-
tempts to improve the wage earners' conditions through
reforms within the framework of capitalism. Hence
Marx rejected labor union endeavors to raise wage rates
and to shorten the hours of work. The most orthodox
of all Marxian parties, the German Social-Democrats,
voted in the eighties in the Reichstag against all meas-
ures of Bismarck's famous Sozialpolitik, including its
most spectacular feature, social security. Likewise in
the opinion of the communists the American New Deal
was just a foredoomed scheme to salvage dying capital-
ism by postponing its breakdown and thereby the ap-
pearance of the socialist millennium.

If employers oppose what is commonly called pro-
labor legislation, they are consequently not guilty of
fighting what Marx considered to be the true interests

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM 145

of the proletarian class. On the contrary. In virtually
freeing economic evolution from the fetters by means
of which ignorant petty bourgeois, bureaucrats, and
such Utopian and humanitarian pseudo socialists as the
Fabians plan to slow it down, they are serving the cause
of labor and socialism. The very selfishness of the ex-
ploiters turns into a boon for the exploited and for the
whole of mankind. Would not Marx, if he had been able
to follow his own ideas to their ultimate logical conse-
quences, have been tempted to say, with Mandeville,
"private vices, public benefits," or, with Adam Smith,
that the rich "are led by an invisible hand" in such a
way that they "without intending it, without knowing
it, advance the interest of the society?" s

However, Marx was always anxious to bring his rea-
soning to an end before the point beyond which its in-
herent contradictions would have become manifest. In
this regard his followers copied their master's attitude.

The bourgeois, both capitalists and entrepreneurs,
say these inconsistent disciples of Marx, are interested
in the preservation of the laissez-faire system. They are
opposed to all attempts to alleviate the lot of the most
numerous, most useful, and most exploited class of men;
they are intent upon stopping progress; they are reac-
tionaries committed to the — of course, hopeless — task
of turning history's clock back. Whatever one may think
of these passionate effusions, repeated daily by news-
papers, politicians, and governments, one cannot deny
that they are incompatible with the essential tenets of

3. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Pt. IV, ch. 1
(Edinburgh, 1813), 1, 419 ff.

146 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

Marxism. From a consistent Marxian point of view the
champions of what is called prolabor legislation are re-
actionary petty bourgeois, while those whom the Marx-
ians call labor-baiters are progressive harbingers of the
bliss to come.

In their ignorance of all business problems, the Marx-
ians failed to see that the present-day bourgeois, those
who are already wealthy capitalists and entrepreneurs,
are in their capacity as bourgeois not selfishly interested
in the preservation of laissez faire. Under laissez faire
their eminent position is daily threatened anew by the
ambitions of impecunious newcomers. Laws that put
obstacles in the way of talented upstarts are detrimental
to the interests of the consumers but they protect those
who have already established their position in business
against the competition of intruders. In making it more
difficult for a businessman to reap profit and in taxing
away the greater part of the profits made, they prevent
the accumulation of capital by newcomers and thus re-
move the inducement that impels old firms toward the
utmost exertion in serving the customers. Measures
sheltering the less efficient against the competition of
the more efficient and laws that aim at reducing or con-
fiscating profits are from the Marxian point of view con-
servative, nay, reactionary. They tend to prevent tech-
nological improvement and economic progress and to
preserve inefficiency and backwardness. If the New
Deal had started in 1900 and not in 1933, the American
consumer would have been deprived of many things
today provided by industries which grew in the first
decades of the century from insignificant beginnings to
national importance and mass production.

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM 147

The culmination of this misconstruction of industrial
problems is the animosity displayed against big business
and against the efforts of smaller concerns to become
bigger. Public opinion, under the spell of Marxism, con-
siders "bigness" one of the worst vices of business and
condones every scheme devised to curb or to hurt big
business by government action. There is no comprehen-
sion of the fact that it is solely bigness in business which
makes it possible to supply the masses with all those
products the present-day American common man does
not want to do without. Luxury goods for the few can
be produced in small shops. Luxury goods for the many
require big business. Those politicians, professors, and
union bosses who curse big business are fighting for a
lower standard of living. They are certainly not further-
ing the interests of the proletarians. And they are, pre-
cisely also from the point of view of the Marxian doc-
trine, ultimately enemies of progress and of improve-
ment of the conditions of the workers.

8. The Critics of Marxism

The materialism of Marx and Engels differs radically
from the ideas of classical materialism. It depicts hu-
man thoughts, choices, and actions as determined by
the material productive forces — tools and machines.
Marx and Engels failed to see that tools and machines
are themselves products of the operation of the human
mind. Even if their sophisticated attempts to describe
all spiritual and intellectual phenomena, which they call
superstructuraL as produced by the material productive
forces had been successful, they would only have traced

148 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

these phenomena back to something which in itself is
a spiritual and intellectual phenomenon. Their reason-
ing moves in a circle. Their alleged materialism is in
fact no materialism at all. It provides merely a verbal
solution of the problems involved.

Occasionally even Marx and Engels were aware of
the fundamental inadequacy of their doctrine. When
Engels at the grave of Marx summed up what he con-
sidered to be the quintessence of his friend's achieve-
ments, he did not mention the material productive
forces at all. Said Engels: "As Darwin discovered the
law of evolution of organic nature, Marx discovered the
law of mankind's historical evolution, that is the simple
fact, hitherto hidden beneath ideological overgrowths,
that men must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and
clothing before they can pursue politics, science, art,
religion, and the like, that consequently the production
of the immediately required foodstuffs and therewith
the stage of economic evolution attained by a people
or an epoch constitute the foundation out of which the
governmental institutions, the ideas about right and
wrong, art, and even the religious ideas of men have
been developed and by means of which they must be
explained — not, as hitherto had been done, the other
way round. 1 Certainly no man was more competent
than Engels to provide an authoritative interpretation
of dialectic materialism. But if Engels was right in this
obituary, then the whole of Marxian materialism fades

1. Engels, Karl Marx, Rede an seinem Grab, many editions. Re-
printed in Franz Mehring, Karl Marx (2d ed. Leipzig, 1919, Leip-
ziger Buchdruckerei Aktiengesellschaft), p. 535.

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM 149

away. It is reduced to a truism known to everybody
from time immemorial and never contested by anybody.
It says no more than the worn-out aphorism: Primum
vivere, deinde philosophari.

As an eristic trick Engels' interpretation turned out
very well. As soon as somebody begins to unmask the
absurdities and contradictions of dialectical material-
ism, the Marxians retort: Do you deny that men must
first of all eat? Do you deny that men are interested in
improving the material conditions of their existence?
Since nobody wants to contest these truisms, they con-
clude that all the teachings of Marxian materialism are
unassailable. And hosts of pseudo philosophers fail to
see through this non sequitur.

The main target of Marx's rancorous attacks was the
Prussian state of the Hohenzollern dynasty. He hated
this regime not because it was opposed to socialism but
precisely because it was inclined to accept socialism.
While his rival Lassalle toyed with the idea of realizing
socialism in cooperation with the Prussian government
led by Bismarck, Marx's International Workingmen's
Association sought to supplant the Hohenzollern. Since
in Prussia the Protestant Church was subject to the
government and was administered by government offi-
cials, Marx never tired of vilifying the Christian re-
ligion too. Anti-Christianism became all the more a
dogma of Marxism in that the countries whose intellec-
tuals first were converted to Marxism were Russia and
Italy. In Russia the church was even more dependent
on the government than in Prussia. In the eyes of the
Italians of the nineteenth century anti-Catholic bias was

150 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

the mark of all who opposed the restoration of the
Pope's secular rule and the disintegration of the newly
won national unity.

The Christian churches and sects did not fight social-
ism. Step by step they accepted its essential political
and social ideas. Today they are, with but few excep-
tions, outspoken in rejecting capitalism and advocating
either socialism or interventionist policies which must
inevitably result in the establishment of socialism. But,
of course, no Christian church can ever acquiesce in a
brand of socialism which is hostile to Christianity and
aims at its suppression. The churches are implacably
opposed to the anti-Christian aspects of Marxism. They
try to distinguish between their own program of social
reform and the Marxian program. The inherent vicious-
ness of Marxism they consider to be its materialism and
atheism.

However, in fighting Marxian materialism the apolo-
gists of religion have entirely missed the point. Many
of them look upon materialism as an ethical doctrine
teaching that men ought only to strive after satisfaction
of the needs of their bodies and after a life of pleasure
and revelry, and ought not to bother about anything
else. What they advance against this ethical material-
ism has no reference to the Marxian doctrine and no
bearing on the issue in dispute.

No more sensible are the objections raised to Marx-
ian materialism by those who pick out definite historical
events — such as the rise of the Christian creed, the cru-
sades, the religious wars — and triumphantly assert that
no materialist interpretation of them could be provided.

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM 151

Every change in conditions affects the structure of de-
mand and supply of various material things and thereby
the short-run interests of some groups of people. It is
therefore possible to show that there were some groups
who profited in the short run and others who were
prejudiced in the short run. Hence the advocates of
Marxism are always in a position to point out that class
interests were involved and thus to annul the objections
raised. Of course, this method of demonstrating the cor-
rectness of the materialist interpretation of history is
entirely wrong. The question is not whether group in-
terests were affected; they are necessarily always af-
fected at least in the short run. The question is whether
the striving after lucre of the groups concerned was the
cause of the event under discussion. For instance, were
the short-run interests of the munitions industry instru-
mental in bringing about the bellicosity and the wars
of our age? In dealing with such problems the Marxians
never mention that where there are interests pro there
are necessarily also interests con. They would have to
explain why the latter did not prevail over the former.
But the "idealist" critics of Marxism were to dull to ex-
pose any of the fallacies of dialectical materialism. They
did not even notice that the Marxians resorted to their
class-interest interpretation only in dealing with phe-
nomena which were generally condemned as bad, never
in dealing with phenomena of which all people approve.
If one ascribes warring to the machinations of muni-
tions capital and alcoholism to machinations of the li-
quor trade, it would be consistent to ascribe cleanliness
to the designs of the soap manufacturers and the flower-

152 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

ing of literature and education to the maneuvering of
the publishing and printing industries. But neither the
Marxians nor their critics ever thought of it.

The outstanding fact in all this is that the Marxian
doctrine of historical change has never received any
judicious critique. It could triumph because its ad-
versaries never disclosed its fallacies and inherent con-
tradictions.

How entirely people have misunderstood Marxian
materialism is shown in the common practice of lump-
ing together Marxism and Freud's psychoanalysis. Ac-
tually no sharper contrast can be thought of than that
between these two doctrines. Materialism aims at re-
ducing mental phenomena to material causes. Psycho-
analysis, on the contrary, deals with mental phenomena
as with an autonomous field. While traditional psychia-
try and neurology tried to explain all pathological con-
ditions with which they were concerned as caused by
definite pathological conditions of some bodily organs,
psychoanalysis succeeded in demonstrating that ab-
normal states of the body are sometimes produced by
mental factors. This discovery was the achievement of
Charcot and of Josef Breuer, and it was the great ex-
ploit of Sigmund Freud to build upon this foundation a
comprehensive systematic discipline. Psychoanalysis is
the opposite of all brands of materialism. If we look
upon it not as a branch of pure knowledge but as a
method of healing the sick, we would have to call it a
thymological branch (geistestvissenschaftlicher Zweig)
of medicine.

Freud was a modest man. He did not make extrava-

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM 153

gant pretensions regarding the importance of his con-
tributions. He was very cautious in touching upon prob-
lems of philosophy and branches of knowledge to the
development of which he himself had not contributed.
He did not venture to attack any of the metaphysical
propositions of materialism. He even went so far as to
admit that one day science may succeed in providing a
purely physiological explanation of the phenomena psy-
choanalysis deals with. Only so long as this does not
happen, psychoanalysis appeared to him scientifically
sound and practically indispensable. He was no less
cautious in criticizing Marxian materialism. He freely
confessed his incompetence in this field. 2 But all this
does not alter the fact that the psychoanalytical ap-
proach is essentially and substantially incompatible
with the epistemology of materialism.

Psychoanalysis stresses the role that the libido, the
sexual impulse, plays in human life. This role had been
neglected before by psychology as well as by all other
branches of knowledge. Psychoanalysis also explains the
reasons for this neglect. But it by no means asserts that
sex is the only human urge seeking satisfaction and
that all psychic phenomena are induced by it. Its pre-
occupation with sexual impulses arose from the fact that
it started as a therapeutical method and that most of
the pathological conditions it had to deal with are
caused by the repression of sexual urges.

The reason some authors linked psychoanalysis and
Marxism was that both were considered to be at vari-

2. Freud, Neue Folge der Vorlestmgen but Einfiihrung in die
Psychoanalyse (Vienna, 1933), pp. 246-53.

154 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

ance with theological ideas. However, with the passing
of time theological schools and groups of various de-
nominations are adopting a different evaluation of the
teachings of Freud. They are not merely dropping their
radical opposition as they have already done before
with regard to modern astronomical and geological
achievements and the theories of phylogenetic change
in the structure of organisms. They are trying to inte-
grate psychoanalysis into the system and the practice
of pastoral theology. They view the study of psycho-
analysis as an important part of the training for the
ministry. 8

As conditions are today, many defenders of the au-
thority of the church are guideless and bewildered in
their attitude toward philosophical and scientific prob-
lems. They condemn what they could or even should
endorse. In fighting spurious doctrines, they resort to
untenable objections which in the minds of those who
can discern the fallaciousness of the objections rather
strengthen the tendency to believe that the attacked
doctrines are sound. Being unable to discover the real
flaw in false doctrines, these apologists for religion may
finally end by approving them. This explains the curious
fact that there are nowadays tendencies in Christian
writings to adopt Marxian dialectical materialism. Thus
a Presbyterian theologian, Professor Alexander Miller,

3. Of course, few theologians would be prepared to endorse the
interpretation of an eminent Catholic historian of medicine, Professor
Petro L. Entralgo, according to which Freud has "brought to full
development some of the possibilities offered by Christianity." P. L.
Entralgo, Mind and Body, trans, by A. M. Esplnosa, Jr. (New York,
P. J. Kennedy and Sons, 1956), p. 131.

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM 155

believes that Christianity "can reckon with the truth
in historical materialism and with the fact of class-
struggle." He not only suggests, as many eminent lead-
ers of various Christian denominations have done be-
fore him, that the church should adopt the essential
principles of Marxian politics. He thinks the church
ought to "accept Marxism" as "the essence of a scien-
tific sociology." 4 How odd to reconcile with the Nicene
creed a doctrine teaching that religious ideas are the
superstructure of the material productive forces!

9. Marxian Materialism and Socialism

Like many frustrated intellectuals and like almost all
contemporary Prussian noblemen, civil servants, teach-
ers, and writers, Marx was driven by a fanatical hatred
of business and businessmen. He turned toward social-
ism because he considered it the worst punishment that
could be inflicted upon the odious bourgeois. At the
same time he realized that the only hope for socialism
was to prevent further discussion of its pros and cons.
People must be induced to accept it emotionally with-
out asking questions about its effects.

In order to achieve this, Marx adapted Hegel's phi-
losophy of history, the official creed of the schools from
which he had graduated. Hegel had arrogated to him-
self the faculty of revealing the Lord's hidden plans to
the public. There was no reason why Doctor Marx
should stand back and withhold from the people the

4. Alexander Miller, The Christian Significance of Karl Marx (New
York, Macmillan, 1947), pp. 80-1.

156 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

good tidings that an inner voice had communicated to
him. Socialism, this voice announced, is bound to come
because this is the course that destiny is steering. There
is no use indulging in debate about the blessings or ills
to be expected from a socialist or communist mode of
production. Such debates would be reasonable only if
men were free to choose between socialism and some
alternative. Besides, being later in the succession of
stages of historical evolution, socialism is also neces-
sarily a higher and better stage, and all doubts about
the benefits to be derived from it are futile. 1

The scheme of philosophy of history that describes
human history as culminating and ending in socialism
is the essence of Marxism, is Karl Marx's main con-
tribution to the prosocialist ideology. Like all similar
schemes including that of Hegel, it was begot by intui-
tion. Marx called it science, Wissenschaft, because in
his day no other epithet could give a doctrine higher
prestige. In pre-Marxian ages it was not customary to
call philosophies of history scientific. Nobody ever ap-
plied the term "science" to the prophecies of Daniel,
the Revelation of St. John, or the writings of Joachim
of Flora.

For the same reasons Marx called his doctrine mate-
rialistic. In the environment of left-wing Hegelianism
in which Marx lived before he settled in London, mate-
rialism was the accepted philosophy. It was taken for
granted that philosophy and science admit of no treat-
ment of the mind-body problem but that taught by ma-
terialism. Authors who did not want to be anathema-
tized by their set had to avoid being suspected of any

1. See below, pp. 175 ff.

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM 157

concession to "idealism." Thus Marx was anxious to call
his philosophy materialistic. In fact, as has been pointed
out above, his doctrine does not deal at all with the
mind-body problem. It does not raise the question of
how the "material productive forces" come into exist-
ence and how and why they change. Marx's doctrine is
not a materialist but a technological interpretation of
history. But, from a political point of view, Marx did
well in calling his doctrine scientific and materialistic.
These predicates lent it a reputation it would never have
acquired without them.

Incidentally it must be noted that Marx and Engels
made no effort to establish the validity of their tech-
nological interpretation of history. In the earlier days
of their careers as authors they enunciated their dogmas
in clear-cut, challenging formulations such as the above-
quoted dictum about the hand mill and the steam mill. 2
In later years they became more reserved and cautious;
after the death of Marx Engels occasionally even made
remarkable concessions to the "bourgeois" and "ideal-
istic" point of view. But never did Marx or Engels or
any of their numerous followers try to give any specifi-
cations about the operation of a mechanism which
would out of a definite state of the material productive
forces bring forth a definite juridical, political, and spir-
itual superstructure. Their famous philosophy never
grew beyond the abrupt enunciation of a piquant
apercu.

The eristic tricks of Marxism succeeded very well
and enrolled hosts of pseudo intellectuals in the ranks of
revolutionary socialism. But they did not discredit what

2. See above, p. 108.

158 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

economists had asserted about the disastrous conse-
quences of a socialist mode of production. Marx had
tabooed the analysis of the operation of a socialist sys-
tem as Utopian, that is, in his terminology, as unscien-
tific, and he as well as his successors smeared all authors
who defied this taboo. Yet these tactics did not alter the
fact that all Marx contributed to the discussion on so-
cialism was to disclose what an inner voice had told him,
namely that the end and aim of mankind's historical
evolution is expropriation of the capitalists.

From the epistemological point of view it must be
emphasized that Marxian materialism does not accom-
plish what a materialist philosophy claims to do. It does
not explain how definite thoughts and judgments of
value originate in the human mind.

The exposure of an untenable doctrine is not tanta-
mount to confirmation of a doctrine conflicting with it.
There is need to state this obvious fact because many
people have forgotten it. The refutation of dialectical
materialism implies, of course, invalidation of the Marx-
ian vindication of socialism. But it does not demonstrate
the truth of the assertions that socialism is unrealizable,
that it would destroy civilization and result in misery
for all, and that its coming is not inevitable. These prop-
ositions can be established only by economic analysis.

Marx and all those who sympathize with his doctrines
have been aware that an economic analysis of socialism
will show the fallacy of the prosocialist arguments.
The Marxists cling to historical materialism and stub-
bornly refuse to listen to its critics because they want
socialism for emotional reasons.

Chapter 8. Philosophy of History

1. The Theme of History

History deals with human action, that is, the actions
performed by individuals and groups of individuals. It
describes the conditions under which people lived and
the way they reacted to these conditions. Its subject are
human judgments of value and the ends men aimed at
guided by these judgments, the means men resorted to
in order to attain the ends sought, and the outcome of
their actions. History deals with man's conscious reac-
tion to the state of his environment, both the natural
environment and the social environment as determined
by the actions of preceding generations as well as by
those of his contemporaries.

Every individual is born into a definite social and
natural milieu. An individual is not simply man in gen-
eral, whom history can regard in the abstract. An in-
dividual is at any instant of his life the product of all
the experiences to which his ancestors were exposed
plus those to which he himself has so far been exposed.
An actual man lives as a member of his family, his race,
his people, and his age; as a citizen of his country; as a
member of a definite social group; as a practitioner of a
certain vocation. He is imbued with definite religious,
philosophical, metaphysical, and political ideas, which
he sometimes enlarges or modifies by his own thinking.

159

160 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

His actions are guided by ideologies that he has ac-
quired through his environment.

However, these ideologies are not immutable. They
are products of the human mind and they change when
new thoughts are added to the old stock of ideas or are
substituted for discarded ideas. In searching for the
origin of new ideas history cannot go beyond establish-
ing that they were produced by a man's thinking. The
ultimate data of history beyond which no historical re-
search can go are human ideas and actions. The his-
torian can trace ideas back to other, previously de-
veloped ideas. He can describe the environmental con-
ditions to which actions were designed to react. But he
can never say more about a new idea and a new mode of
acting than that they originated at a definite point of
space and time in the mind of a man and were accepted
by other men.

Attempts have been made to explain the birth of
ideas out of "natural" factors. Ideas were described as
the necessary product of the geographical environment,
the physical structure of people's habitat. This doctrine
manifestly contradicts the data available. Many ideas
are the response elicited by the stimulus of a man's
physical environment. But the content of these ideas is
not determined by the environment. To the same phys-
ical environment various individuals and groups of in-
dividuals respond in a different way.

Others have tried to explain the diversity of ideas and
actions by biological factors. The species man is sub-
divided into racial groups with distinctive hereditary
biological traits. Historical experience does not preclude

PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 161

the assumption that the members of some racial groups
are better gifted for conceiving sound ideas than those
of other races. However, what is to be explained is why
a man's ideas differ from those of people of the same
race. Why do brothers differ from one another?

It is moreover questionable whether cultural back-
wardness conclusively indicates a racial group's perma-
nent inferiority. The evolutionary process that trans-
formed the animal-like ancestors of man into modern
men extended over many hundreds of thousands of
years. Viewed in the perspective of this period, the fact
that some races have not yet reached a cultural level
other races passed several thousand years ago does not
seem to matter very much. There are individuals whose
physical and mental development proceeds more slowly
than the average who yet in later life far excel most
normally developing persons. It is not impossible that
the same phenomenon may occur with whole races.

There is for history nothing beyond people's ideas
and the ends they were aiming at motivated by these
ideas. If the historian refers to the meaning of a fact,
he always refers either to the interpretation acting men
gave to the situation in which they had to live and to
act, and to the outcome of their ensuing actions, or to
the interpretation which other people gave to the result
of these actions. The final causes to which history refers
are always the ends individuals and groups of indi-
viduals are aiming at. History does not recognize in the
course of events any other meaning and sense than
those attributed to them by acting men, judging from
the point of view of their own human concerns.

162 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

2. The Theme of the Philosophy of History

Philosophy of history looks upon mankind's history
from a different point of view. It assumes that God or
nature or some other superhuman entity providentially
directs the course of events toward a definite goal dif-
ferent from the ends which acting men are aiming at.
There is a meaning in the sequence of events which
supersedes the intentions of men. The ways of Provi-
dence are not those of mortal men. The shortsighted in-
dividual deludes himself in believing that he chooses
and acts according to his own concerns. In fact he un-
knowingly must act in such a way that finally the provi-
dential plan will be realized. The historical process has
a definite purpose set by Providence without any regard
to the human will. It is a progress toward a preordained
end. The task of the philosophy of history is to judge
every phase of history from the point of view of this
purpose.

If the historian speaks of progress and retrogression,
he refers to one of the ends men are consciously aiming
at in their actions. In his terminology progress means
the attainment of a state of affairs which acting men
considered or consider more satisfactory than pre-
ceding states. In the terminology of a philosophy of his-
tory progress means advance on the way that leads to
the ultimate goal set by Providence.

Every variety of the philosophy of history must an-
swer two questions. First: What is the final end aimed
at and the route by which it is to be reached? Second:

PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 163

By what means are people induced or forced to pursue
this course? Only if both questions are fully answered
is the system complete.

In answering the first question the philosopher refers
to intuition. In order to corroborate his surmise, he may
quote the opinions of older authors, that is, the intuitive
speculations of other people. The ultimate source of the
philosopher's knowledge is invariably a divination of
the intentions of Providence, hitherto hidden to the non-
initiated and revealed to the philosopher by dint of his
intuitive power. To objections raised about the correct-
ness of his guess the philosopher can only reply: An
inner voice tells me that I am right and you are wrong.

Most philosophies of history not only indicate the
final end of historical evolution but also disclose the
way mankind is bound to wander in order to reach the
goal. They enumerate and describe successive states or
stages, intermediary stations on the way from the early
beginnings to the final end. The systems of Hegel,
Comte, and Marx belong to this class. Others ascribe to
certain nations or races a definite mission entrusted to
them by the plans of Providence. Such are the role of
the Germans in the system of Fichte and the role of the
Nordics and the Aryans in the constructions of modern
racists.

With regard to the answer given to the second ques-
tion, two classes of philosophies of history are to be dis-
tinguished.

The first group contends that Providence elects some
mortal men as special instruments for the execution of
its plan. In the charismatic leader superhuman powers

164 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

are vested. He is the plenipotentiary of Providence
whose office it is to guide the ignorant populace the
right way. He may be a hereditary king, or a commoner
who has spontaneously seized power and whom the
blind and wicked rabble in their envy and hatred call a
usurper. For the charismatic leader but one thing mat-
ters: the faithful performance of his mission no matter
what the means he may be forced to resort to. He is
above all laws and moral precepts. What he does is al-
ways right, and what his opponents do is always wrong.
Such was the doctrine of Lenin, who in this point de-
viated from the doctrine of Marx. 1

It is obvious that the philosopher does not attribute
the office of charismatic leadership to every man who
claims that he has been called. He distinguishes be-
tween the legitimate leader and the fiendish impostor,
between the God-sent prophet and the hell-born
tempter. He calls only those heroes and seers legitimate
leaders who make people walk toward the goal set by
Providence. As the philosophies disagree with regard
to this goal, so they disagree with regard to the distinc-
tion between the legitimate leader and the devil in-
carnate. They disagree in their judgments about Caesar
and Brutus, Innocent III and Frederick II, Charles I
and Cromwell, the Bourbons and the Napoleons.

But their dissent goes even further. There are rivalries
between various candidates for the supreme office
which are caused only by personal ambition. No ideo-
logical convictions separated Caesar and Pompey, the
house of Lancaster and that of York, Trotsky and Stalin.

1. On the doctrine of Marx see above, pp. 112 ff.

PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 165

Their antagonism was due to the fact that they aimed at
the same office, which of course only one man could get.
Here the philosopher must choose among various pre-
tenders. Having arrogated to himself the power to pro-
nounce judgment in the name of Providence, the philos-
opher blesses one of the pretenders and condemns his
rivals.

The second group suggested another solution of the
problem. As they see it, Providence resorted to a cun-
ning device. It implanted in every man's mind certain
impulses the operation of which must necessarily result
in the realization of its own plan. The individual thinks
that he goes his own way and strives after his own ends.
But unwittingly he contributes his share to the realiza-
tion of the end Providence wants to attain. Such was
the method of Kant. 2 It was restated by Hegel and later
adopted by many Hegelians, among them by Marx. It
was Hegel who coined the phrase "cunning of reason"
(List der Vernunft) . 8

There is no use arguing with doctrines derived from
intuition. Every system of the philosophy of history is
an arbitrary guess which can neither be proved nor dis-
proved. There is no rational means available for either
endorsing or rejecting a doctrine suggested by an inner
voice.

2. Kant, Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in wetibiirgerlicher
Ahsicht, Werke ( Inselausgabe, Leipzig, 1921), 1, 221-40.

3. Hegel, Vorlesungen tiber die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte, 1,
83.

166 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

3. The Difference between the Point of View of
History and That of Philosophy of History

Before the eighteenth century most dissertations deal-
ing with human history in general and not merely with
concrete historical experience interpreted history from
the point of view of a definite philosophy of history.
This philosophy was seldom clearly defined and par-
ticularized. Its tenets were taken for granted and im-
plied in commenting on events. Only in the Age of En-
lightenment did some eminent philosophers abandon
the traditional methods of the philosophy of history and
stop brooding about the hidden purpose of Providence
directing the course of events. They inaugurated a new
social philosophy, entirely different from what is called
the philosophy of history. They looked upon human
events from the point of view of the ends aimed at by
acting men, instead of from the point of view of the
plans ascribed to God or nature.

The significance of this radical change in the ideo-
logical outlook can best be illustrated by referring to
Adam Smith's point of view. But in order to analyze the
ideas of Smith we must first refer to Mandeville.

The older ethical systems were almost unanimous in
the condemnation of self-interest. They were ready to
find the self-interest of the tillers of the soil pardonable
and very often tried to excuse or even to glorify the
kings' lust for aggrandisement. But they were adamant
in their disapprobation of other people's craving for

PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 167

well-being and riches. Referring to the Sermon on the
Mount, they exalted self-denial and indifference with
regard to the treasures which moth and rust corrupt,
and branded self-interest a reprehensible vice. Bernard
de Mandeville in his Fable of the Bees tried to discredit
this doctrine. He pointed out that self-interest and the
desire for material well-being, commonly stigmatized as
vices, are in fact the incentives whose operation makes
for welfare, prosperity, and civilization.

Adam Smith adopted this idea. It was not the object
of his studies to develop a philosophy of history accord-
ing to the traditional pattern. He did not claim to have
guessed the goals which Providence has set for mankind
and aims to realize by directing men's actions. He ab-
stained from any assertions concerning the destiny of
mankind and from any prognostication about the in-
eluctable end of historical change. He merely wanted
to determine and to analyze the factors that had been
instrumental in man's progress from the straitened con-
ditions of older ages to the more satisfactory conditions
of his own age. It was from this point of view that he
stressed the fact that "every part of nature, when atten-
tively surveyed, equally demonstrates the providential
care of its Author" and that "we may admire the wisdom
and goodness of God, even in the weakness and folly of
men." The rich, aiming at the "gratification of their
own vain and insatiable desires," are "led by an in-
visible hand" in such a way that they "without intend-
ing it, without knowing it, advance the interest of so-
ciety, and afford means for the multiplication of the

168 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

species." * Believing in the existence of God, Smith could
not help tracing back all earthly things to him and his
providential care, just as later the Catholic Bastiat spoke
of God's finger. 2 But in referring in this way to God
neither of them intended to make any assertion about
the ends God may want to realize in historical evolu-
tion. The ends they dealt with in their writings were
those aimed at by acting men, not by Providence. The
pre-established harmony to which they alluded did not
affect their epistemological principles and the methods
of their reasoning. It was merely a means devised to
reconcile the purely secular and mundane procedures
they applied in their scientific efforts with their re-
ligious beliefs. They borrowed this expedient from pious
astronomers, physicists, and biologists who had resorted
to it without deviating in their research from the em-
pirical methods of the natural sciences.

What made it necessary for Adam Smith to look for
such a reconciliation was the fact that — like Mandeville
before him — he could not free himself from the stand-
ards and the terminology of traditional ethics that con-
demned as vicious man's desire to improve his own ma-
terial conditions. Consequently he was faced with a
paradox. How can it be that actions commonly blamed
as vicious generate effects commonly praised as bene-
ficial? The utilitarian philosophers found the right an-
swer. What results in benefits must not be rejected as
morally bad. Only those actions are bad which produce

1. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Pt. II, Sec. Ill,
ch. 3, and Pt. IV, ch. 1 (Edinburgh, 1813), 1, 243, 419-20.

2. Bastiat, Harmonies iconomiques (2d ed. Paris, 1851), p. 334.

PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 169

bad results. But the utilitarian point of view did not pre-
vail. Public opinion still clings to pre-Mandevillian
ideas. It does not approve of a businessman's success in
supplying the customers with merchandise that best
suits their wishes. It looks askance at wealth acquired in
trade and industry, and finds it pardonable only if the
owner atones for it by endowing charitable institutions.

For the agnostic, atheistic, and antitheistic historians
and economists there is no need to refer to Smith's and
Bastiat's invisible hand. The Christian historians and
economists who reject capitalism as an unfair system
consider it blasphemous to describe egoism as a means
Providence has chosen in order to attain its ends. Thus
the theological views of Smith and Bastiat no longer
have any meaning for our age. But it is not impossible
that the Christian churches and sects will one day dis-
cover that religious freedom can be realized only in a
market economy and will stop supporting anticapital-
istic tendencies. Then they will either cease to disap-
prove of self-interest or return to the solution suggested
by these eminent thinkers.

Just as important as realizing the essential distinction
between the philosophy of history and the new, purely
mundane social philosophy which developed from the
eighteenth century on is awareness of the difference
between the stage-doctrine implied in almost every
philosophy of history and the attempts of historians to
divide the totality of historical events into various pe-
riods or ages.

In the context of a philosophy of history the various
states or stages are, as has been mentioned already,

170 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

intermediary stations on the way to a final stage which
will fully realize the plan of Providence. For many
Christian philosophies of history the pattern was set
by the four kingdoms of the Book of Daniel. The
modern philosophies of history borrowed from Daniel
the notion of the final stage of human affairs, the notion
of "an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass
away." 3 However Hegel, Comte, and Marx may dis-
agree with Daniel and with one another, they all accept
this notion, which is an essential element in every phi-
losophy of history. They announce either that the final
stage has already been reached (Hegel), or that man-
kind is just entering it (Comte), or that its coming is
to be expected every day (Marx).

The ages of history as distinguished by historians are
of a different character. Historians do not claim to know
anything about the future. They deal only with the past.
Their periodization schemes aim at classifying historical
phenomena without any presumption of forecasting
future events. The readiness of many historians to press
general history or special fields — like economic or social
history or the history of warfare — into artificial sub-
divisions has had serious drawbacks. It has been a
handicap rather than an aid to the study of history. It
was often prompted by political bias. Modern historians
agree in paying little attention to such period schemes.
But what counts for us is merely establishing the fact
that the epistemological character of the periodization
of history by historians is different from the stage
schemes of the philosophy of history.

3. Daniel 7:14.

PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 171

4. Philosophy of History and the Idea of God

The three most popular pre-Darwinian } philosophies
of history of the nineteenth century — those of Hegel,
Comte, and Marx — were adaptations of the Enlighten-
ment's idea of progress. And this doctrine of human
progress was an adaptation of the Christian philosophy
of salvation.

Christian theology discerns three stages in human his-
tory: the bliss of the age preceding the fall of man, the
age of secular depravity, and finally the coming of the
Kingdom of Heaven. If left alone, man would not be
able to expiate the original sin and to attain salvation.
But God in his mercy leads him to eternal life. In spite
of all the frustrations and adversities of man's temporal
pilgrimage, there is hope for a blessed future.

The Enlightenment altered this scheme in order to
make it agree with its scientific outlook. God endowed
man with reason that leads him on the road toward
perfection. In the dark past superstition and sinister
machinations of tyrants and priests restrained the exer-
cise of this most precious gift bestowed upon man. But

1. The Marxian system of philosophy of history and dialectic ma-
terialism was completed with the Preface, dated January 1859, of
Zur Kritik der Politischen Oekonomie. Darwin's The Origin of Species
appeared in the same year. Marx read it in the first part of Decem-
ber 1860 and declared in letters to Engels and Lassalle that in spite
of various shortcomings it provided a biological foundation ("natur-
historische Grundlage" or "naturwissenschaftkche Unterlage") for his
doctrine of the class struggle. Karl Marx, Chronik seines Lebens in
Einzeldaten (Moscow, Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute, 1934), pp. 206,
207.

172 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

at last reason has burst its chains and a new age has
been inaugurated. Henceforth every generation will
surpass its predecessors in wisdom, virtue, and success
in improving earthly conditions. Progress toward per-
fection will continue forever. Reason, now emancipated
and put in its right place, will never again be relegated
to the unseemly position the dark ages assigned to it.
All "reactionary" ventures of obscurantists are doomed
to failure. The trend toward progress is irresistible.

Only in the doctrines of the economists did the notion
of progress have a definite, unambiguous meaning. All
men are striving after survival and after improvement
of the material conditions of their existence. They want
to live and to raise their standard of living. In employ-
ing the term "progress" the economist abstains from
expressing judgments of value. He appraises things
from the point of view of acting men. He calls better
or worse what appears as such in their eyes. Thus capi-
talism means progress since it brings about progressive
improvement of the material conditions of a continually
increasing population. It provides people with some sat-
isfactions which they did not get before and which
gratify some of their aspirations.

But to most of the eighteenth-century champions of
meliorism this "mean, materialistic" content of the econ-
omists' idea of progress was repulsive. They nurtured
vague dreams of an earthly paradise. Their ideas about
the conditions of man in this paradise were rather nega-
tive than affirmative. They pictured a state of affairs free
of all those things which they found unsatisfactory in
their environment: no tyrants, no oppression or perse-

PHILOSOPHY OF HISTOHT 173

cution, no wars, no poverty, no crime; liberty, equality,
and fraternity; all men happy, peacefully united, and
cooperating in brotherly love. As they assumed that
nature is bountiful and all men were good and reason-
able, they could see no cause for the existence of all
that they branded evil but inherent deficiencies in man-
kind's social and political organization. What was
needed was a constitutional reform that would substi-
tute good laws for bad laws. All who opposed this re-
form dictated by reason were considered hopelessly de-
praved individuals, enemies of the common weal, whom
the good people were bound to annihilate physically.

The main defect of this doctrine was its incompre-
hension of the liberal program as developed by the econ-
omists and put into effect by the harbingers of capital-
istic private enterprise. The disciples of Jean Jacques
Rousseau who raved about nature and the blissful con-
dition of man in the state of nature did not take notice
of the fact that the means of subsistence are scarce and
that the natural state of man is extreme poverty and in-
security. They disparaged as greed and predatory sel-
fishness the businessmen's endeavors to remove need
and want so far as possible. Witnesses to the inaugura-
tion of new ways of economic management that were
destined to provide unprecedented improvement in the
standard of living for an unprecedented increase of
population, they indulged in daydreams about a return
to nature or to the alleged virtuous simplicity of early
republican Rome. While manufacturers were busy im-
proving the methods of production and turning out
more and better commodities for the consumption of

174 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

the masses, the followers of Rousseau perorated about
reason and virtue and liberty.

It is vain to talk about progress pure and simple. One
must first clearly designate the goal one has chosen to
attain. Only then is it permissible to call an advance
on the way that leads to this goal progress. The philos-
ophers of the Enlightenment entirely failed in this re-
gard. They did not say anything definite about the char-
acteristics of the goal they had in mind. They only
glorified this insufficiently described goal as the state
of perfection and the realization of all that is good.
But they were rather hazy in employing the epithets
perfect and good.

As against the pessimism of ancient and modern au-
thors who had described the course of human history as
the progressive deterioration of the perfect conditions
of the fabulous golden age of the past, the Enlighten-
ment displayed an optimistic view. As has been pointed
out above, its philosophers derived their belief in the
inevitability of progress toward perfection from the con-
fidence they placed in man's reason. By dint of his rea-
son man leams more and more from experience. Every
new generation inherits a treasure of wisdom from its
forbears and adds something to it. Thus the descendents
necessarily surpass their ancestors.

It did not occur to the champions of this idea that
man is not infallible and that reason can err in the
choice both of the ultimate goal to be aimed at and
of the means to be resorted to for its attainment. Their
theistic faith implied faith in the goodness of almighty
Providence that will guide mankind along the right

PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 175

path. Their philosophy had eliminated the Incarnation
and all the other Christian dogmas but one: salvation.
God's magnificence manifested itself in the fact that
the work of his creation was necessarily committed to
progressive improvement.

Hegel's philosophy of history assimilated these ideas.
Reason (Vernunft) rules the world, and this cognition
is tantamount to the insight that Providence rules it.
The task of philosophy of history is to discern the plans
of Providence. 2 The ultimate foundation of the opti-
mism that Hegel displayed with regard to the course
of historical events and the future of mankind was his
firm faith in God's infinite goodness. God is genuine
goodness. "The cognition of philosophy is that no power
surpasses the might of the good, i.e., God, and could pre-
vent God from asserting himself, that God is right at the
last, that human history is nothing else than the plan of
Providence. God rules the world; the content of his
government, the realization of his plan, is the history of
mankind." 3

In the philosophy of Comte as well as in that of Marx
there is no room left for God and his infinite goodness.
In the system of Hegel it made sense to speak of a nec-
essary progress of mankind from less to more satisfac-
tory conditions. God had decided that every later stage
of human affairs should be a higher and better stage.
No other decision could be expected from the almighty
and infinitely good Lord. But the atheists Comte and

2. Hegel, Vorlesungen iiber die Philosophic der Weltgeschichte, 1,
4, 17-18.

3. Ibid., p. 55.

176 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

Marx should not have simply assumed that the march
of time is necessarily a march toward ever better condi-
tions and will eventually lead to a perfect state. It was
up to them to prove that progress and improvement are
inevitable and a relapse into unsatisfactory conditions
impossible. But they never embarked upon such a dem-
onstration.

If for the sake of argument one were prepared to ac-
quiesce in Marx's arbitrary prediction that society is
moving "with the inexorability of a law of nature" to-
ward socialism, it would still be necessary to examine
the question whether socialism can be considered as a
workable system of society's economic organization and
whether it does not rather mean the disintegration of
social bonds, the return to primitive barbarism, and
poverty and starvation for all.

The purpose of Marx's philosophy of history was to
silence the critical voices of the economists by pointing
out that socialism was the next and final stage of the
historical process and therefore a higher and better
stage than the preceding stages; that it was even the
final state of human perfection, the ultimate goal of
human history. But this conclusion was a non sequitur
in the frame of a godless philosophy of history. The
idea of an irresistible trend toward salvation and the
establishment of a perfect state of everlasting bliss is
an eminently theological idea. In the frame of a system
of atheism it is a mere arbitrary guess, deprived of any
sense. There is no theology without God. An atheistic
system of philosophy of history must not base its opti-

PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 177

mism upon confidence in the infinite goodness of God
Almighty.

5. Activistic Determinism and
Fatalistic Determinism

Every philosophy of history is an instance of the pop-
ular idea, mentioned above, 1 that all future events are
recorded in advance in the great book of fate. A special
dispensation has allowed the philosopher to read pages
of this book and to reveal their content to the unini-
tiated.

This brand of determinism inherent in a philosophy
of history must be distinguished from the type of deter-
minism that guides man's actions and search for knowl-
edge. The latter type — we may call it activistic deter-
minism — is the outgrowth of the insight that every
change is the result of a cause and that there is a regu-
larity in the concatenation of cause and effect. However
unsatisfactory the endeavors of philosophy to throw
light upon the problem of causality may have been
hitherto, it is impossible for the human mind to think of
uncaused change. Man cannot help assuming that every
change is caused by a preceding change and causes
further change. Notwithstanding all the doubts raised
by the philosophers, human conduct is entirely and in
every sphere of life — action, philosophy and science
— directed by the category of causality. The lesson
brought home to man by activistic determinism is: If

1. See above, p. 79.

178 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

you want to attain a definite end, you must resort to
the appropriate means; there is no other way to success.

But in the context of a philosophy of history deter-
minism means: This will happen however much you
may try to avoid it. While activistic determinism is a
call to action and the utmost exertion of a man's physi-
cal and mental capacities, this type of determinism — we
may call it fatalistic determinism — paralyzes the will
and engenders passivity and lethargy. As has been
pointed out, 2 it is so contrary to the innate impulse to-
ward activity that it never could really get hold of the
human mind and prevent people from acting.

In depicting the history of the future the philosopher
of history as a rule restricts himself to describing big-
scale events and the final outcome of the historical
process. He thinks that this limitation distinguishes his
guesswork from the augury of common soothsayers who
dwell upon details and unimportant little things. Such
minor events are in his view contingent and unpredicta-
ble. He does not bother about them. His attention is ex-
clusively directed toward the great destiny of the whole,
not to the trifle which, as he thinks, does not matter.

However, the historical process is the product of all
these small changes going on ceaselessly. He who claims
to know the final end must necessarily know them too.
He must either take them all in at a glance with all their
consequences or be aware of a principle that inevitably
directs their result to a preordained end. The arrogance
with which a writer elaborating his system of philosophy
of history looks down upon the small fry of palmists

2. See above, pp. 79 ff.

PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 179

and crystal gazers is therefore hardly different from the
haughtiness which in precapitalistic times wholesalers
displayed toward retailers and peddlers. What he sells
is essentially the same questionable wisdom.

Activistic determinism is by no means incompatible
with the — rightly understood — idea of freedom of the
will. It is, in fact, the correct exposition of this often
misinterpreted notion. Because there is in the universe a
regularity in the concatenation and sequence of phe-
nomena, and because man is capable of acquiring
knowledge about some of these regularities, human
action becomes possible within a definite margin. Free
will means that man can aim at definite ends because
he is familiar with some of the laws determining the
flux of world affairs. There is a sphere within which
man can choose between alternatives. He is not, like
other animals, inevitably and irremediably subject to
the operation of blind fate. He can, within definite nar-
row limits, divert events from the course they would
take if left alone. He is an acting being. In this consists
his superiority to mice and microbes, plants and stones.
In this sense he applies the — perhaps inexpedient and
misleading — term "free will."

The emotional appeal of the cognizance of this free-
dom, and the idea of moral responsibility which it
engenders, are as much facts as anything else called by
that name. Comparing himself with all other beings,
man sees his own dignity and superiority in his will.
The will is unbendable and must not yield to any
violence and oppression, because man is capable of
choosing between life and death and of preferring

180 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

death if life can be preserved only at the price of sub-
mitting to unbearable conditions. Man alone can die for
a cause. It was this that Dante had in mind: "Che
volonta, se non vuol, non s'ammorza." 3

One of the fundamental conditions of man's existence
and action is the fact that he does not know what will
happen in the future. The exponent of a philosophy of
history, arrogating to himself the omniscience of God,
claims that an inner voice has revealed to him knowl-
edge of things to come.

3. Dante, Paradiso, TV, 76: "The will does not die if it does not
will."

PART THREE. EPISTEMOLOGICAL
PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

Chapter 9. The Concept of Historical Individuality

1. The Ultimate Given of History

The human search for knowledge cannot go on end-
lessly. Inevitably, sooner or later, it will reach a point
beyond which it cannot proceed. It will then be faced
with an ultimate given, a datum that man's reason can-
not trace back to other data. In the course of the evolu-
tion of knowledge science has succeeded in tracing
back to other data some things and events which pre-
viously had been viewed as ultimate. We may expect
that this will also occur in the future. But there will al-
ways remain something that is for the human mind an
ultimate given, unanalyzable and irreducible. Human
reason cannot even conceive a kind of knowledge that
would not encounter such an insurmountable obstacle.
There is for man no such thing as omniscience.

In dealing with such ultimate data history refers to
individuality. The characteristics of individual men,
their ideas and judgments of value as well as the actions
guided by those ideas and judgments, cannot be traced
back to something of which they would be the deriva-
tives. There is no answer to the question why Frederick
II invaded Silesia except: because he was Frederick II.
It is customary, although not very expedient, to call the
mental process by means of which a datum is traced
back to other data rational. Then an ultimate datum is

183

184 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

called irrational. No historical research can be thought
of that would not ultimately meet such irrational facts.

Philosophies of history claim to avoid referring to in-
dividuality and irrationality. They pretend to provide a
thorough-going interpretation of all historical events.
What they really do is relegate the ultimate given to
two points of their scheme, to its supposed beginning
and its supposed end. They assume that there is at the
start of history an unanalyzable and irreducible agency,
for example Geist in the system of Hegel or the material
productive forces in that of Marx. And they further
assume that this prime mover of history aims at a
definite end, also unanalyzable and irreducible, for in-
stance the Prussian state of about 1825 or socialism.
Whatever one may think about the various systems of
philosophy of history, it is obvious that they do not
eliminate reference to individuality and irrationality.
They merely shift it to another point of their interpreta-
tion.

Materialism wants to throw history overboard en-
tirely. All ideas and actions should be explained as the
necessary outcome of definite physiological processes.
But this would not make it possible to reject any ref-
erence to irrationality. Like history, the natural sciences
are ultimately faced with some data defying any further
reduction to other data, that is, with something ulti-
mately given.

2. The Role of the Individual in History

In the context of a philosophy of history there is no
room left for any reference to individuality other than

CONCEPT OF HISTORICAL INDIVIDUALITY 185

that of the prime mover and his plan determining the
way events must go. All individual men are merely tools
in the hand of ineluctable destiny. Whatever they may
do, the outcome of their actions must necessarily fit into
the preordained plan of Providence.

What would have happened if Lieutenant Napoleon
Bonaparte had been killed in action at Toulon? Friedrich
Engels knew the answer: "Another would have filled the
place." For "the man has always been found as soon as he
became necessary." 1 Necessary for whom and for what
purpose? Obviously for the material productive forces to
bring about, at a later date, socialism. It seems that the
material productive forces always have a substitute at
hand, just as a cautious opera manager has an understudy
ready to sing the tenor's part in case the star should
catch a cold. If Shakespeare had died in infancy, an-
other man would have written Hamlet and the Sonnets.
But, some people ask, how did this surrogate while
away his time since Shakespeare's good health relieved
him from this chore?

The issue has been purposely obfuscated by the
champions of historical necessity, who confused it with
other problems.

Looking backward upon the past, the historian must
say that, all conditions having been as they were, every-
thing that happened was inevitable. At any instant the
state of affairs was the necessary consequence of the
immediately preceding state. But among the elements
determining any given state of historical affairs there

1. Letter to Starkenburg, Jan. 25, 1894, Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels, Correspondence 1846-1895 (London, M. Lawrence, Ltd.,
1934), p. 518.

186 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

are factors that cannot be traced back further than to
the point at which the historian is faced with the ideas
and actions of individuals.

When the historian says that the French Revolution
of 1789 would not have happened if some things had
been different, he is merely trying to establish the forces
that brought about the event and the influence of each
of these forces. Taine did not indulge in idle specula-
tions as to what would have happened if the doctrines
that he called X esprit revolutionnaire and Vesprit clas-
sique had not been developed. He wanted to assign to
each of them its relevance in the chain of events that
resulted in the outbreak and the course of the Revolu-
tion. 2

A second confusion concerns the limits drawn upon
the influence of great men. Simplified accounts of his-
tory, adapted to the capacity of people slow of compre-
hension, have presented history as a product of the feats
of great men. The older Hohenzollern made Prussia,
Bismarck made the Second Reich, William II ruined it,
Hitler made and ruined the Third Reich. No serious
historian ever shared in such nonsense. It has never
been contested that the part played even by the greatest
figures of history was much more moderate. Every man,
whether great or small, lives and acts within the frame
of his age's historical circumstances. These circum-
stances are determined by all the ideas and events of
the preceding ages as well as by those of his own age.
The Titan may outweigh each of his contemporaries;

2. Taine, Les Origines de la France contemporaine, 1, Bk. Ill
(16th ed. Paris, 1887), 221-328.

CONCEPT OF HISTORICAL INDIVIDUALITY 187

he is no match for the united forces of the dwarfs. A
statesman can succeed only insofar as his plans are ad-
justed to the climate of opinion of his time, that is to
the ideas that have got hold of his fellows' minds. He
can become a leader only if he is prepared to guide
people along the paths they want to walk and toward
the goal they want to attain. A statesman who antago-
nizes public opinion is doomed to failure. No matter
whether he is an autocrat or an officer of a democracy,
the politician must give the people what they wish to
get, very much as a businessmanraust supply the cus-
tomers with the things they wish to acquire.

It is different with the pioneers of new ways of think-
ing and new modes of art and literature. The path-
breaker who disdains the applause he may get from the
crowd of his contemporaries does not depend on his
own age's ideas. He is free to say with Schiller's Marquis
Posa: "This century is not ripe for my ideas; I live as a
citizen of centuries to come." The genius' work too is
embedded in the sequence of historical events, is condi-
tioned by the achievements of preceding generations,
and is merely a chapter in the evolution of ideas. But it
adds something new and unheard of to the treasure
of thoughts and may in this sense be called creative.
The genuine history of mankind is the history of ideas.
It is ideas that distinguish man from all other beings.
Ideas engender social institutions, political changes,
technological methods of production, and all that is
called economic conditions. And in searching for their
origin we inevitably come to a point at which all that
can be asserted is that a man had an idea. Whether the

188 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

name of this man is known or not is of secondary im-
portance.

This is the meaning that history attaches to the notion
of individuality. Ideas are the ultimate given of histor-
ical inquiry. All that can be said about ideas is that
they came to pass. The historian may point out how a
new idea fitted into the ideas developed by earlier gen-
erations and how it may be considered a continuation
of these ideas and their logical sequel. New ideas do
not originate in an ideological vacuum. They are called
forth by the previously existing ideological structure;
they are the response offered by a man's mind to the
ideas developed by his predecessors. But it is an arbi-
trary surmise to assume that they were bound to come
and that if A had not generated them a certain B or C
would have performed the job.

In this sense what the limitations of our knowledge
induce us to call chance plays a part in history. If Aris-
totle had died in childhood, intellectual history would
have been affected. If Bismarck had died in 1860, world
affairs would have taken a different course. To what ex-
tent and with what consequences nobody can know.

3. The Chimera of the Group Mind

In their eagerness to eliminate from history any ref-
erence to individuals and individual events, collectivist
authors resorted to a chimerical construction, the group
mind or social mind.

At the end of the eighteenth and beginning of
the nineteenth centuries German philologists began to

CONCEPT OF HISTORICAL INDIVIDUALITY 189

study German medieval poetry, which had long since
fallen into oblivion. Most of the epics they edited from
old manuscripts were imitations of French works. The
names of their authors — most of them knightly warriors
in the service of dukes or counts — were known. These
epics were not much to boast of. But there were two
epics of a quite different character, genuinely original
works of high literary value, far surpassing the conven-
tional products of the courtiers: the Nibelungenlied and
the Gudrun. The former is one of the great books of
world literature and undoubtedly the outstanding poem
Germany produced before the days of Goethe and
Schiller. The names of the authors of these master-
pieces were not handed down to posterity. Perhaps
the poets belonged to the class of professional enter-
tainers (Spielleute) , who not only were snubbed by the
nobility but had to endure mortifying legal disabilities.
Perhaps they were heretical or Jewish, and the clergy
was eager to make people forget them. At any rate the
philologists called these two works "people's epics'*
(Volksepen) . This term suggested to naive minds the
idea that they were written not by individual authors
but by the "people." The same mythical authorship was
attributed to popular songs (Volkslieder) whose au-
thors were unknown.

Again in Germany, in the years following the Napo-
leonic wars, the problem of comprehensive legislative
codification was brought up for discussion. In this con-
troversy the historical school of jurisprudence, led by
Savigny, denied the competence of any age and any
persons to write legislation. Like the Volksepen and the

190 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

Volkslieder, a nation's laws, they declared, are a spon-
taneous emanation of the Volksgeist, the nation's spirit
and peculiar character. Genuine laws are not arbitrarily
written by legislators; they spring up and thrive organ-
ically from the Volksgeist.

This Volksgeist doctrine was devised in Germany
as a conscious reaction against the ideas of natural law
and the "un-German" spirit of the French Revolution.
But it was further developed and elevated to the dig-
nity of a comprehensive social doctrine by the French
positivists, many of whom not only were committed to
the principles of the most radical among the revolu-
tionary leaders but aimed at completing the "unfin-
ished revolution" by a violent overthrow of the capital-
istic mode of production. Emile Durkheim and his
school deal with the group mind as if it were a real phe-
nomenon, a distinct agency, thinking and acting. As
they see it, not individuals but the group is the subject
of history.

As a corrective of these fancies the truism must be
stressed that only individuals think and act. In dealing
with the thoughts and actions of individuals the histo-
rian establishes the fact that some individuals influence
one another in their thinking and acting more strongly
than they influence and are influenced by other indi-
viduals. He observes that cooperation and division of
labor exist among some, while existing to a lesser extent
or not at all among others. He employs the term "group"
to signify an aggregation of individuals who cooperate
together more closely. However, the distinction of
groups is optional. The group is not an ontological en-

CONCEPT OF HISTORICAL INDIVIDUALITY 191

tity like the biological species. The various group con-
cepts intersect one another. The historian chooses, ac-
cording to the special plan of his studies, the features
and attributes that determine the classification of indi-
viduals into various groups. The grouping may integrate
people speaking the same language or professing the
same religion or practicing the same vocation or occu-
pation or descended from the same ancestry. The group
concept of Gobineau was different from that of Marx.
In short, the group concept is an ideal type and as such
is derived from the historian's understanding of the
historical forces and events.

Only individuals think and act. Each individual's
thinking and acting is influenced by his fellows' think-
ing and acting. These influences are variegated. The
individual American's thoughts and conduct cannot be
interpreted if one assigns him to a single group. He is
not only an American but a member of a definite reli-
gious group or an agnostic or an atheist; he has a job,
he belongs to a political party, he is affected by tradi-
tions inherited from his ancestors and conveyed to him
by his upbringing, by the family, the school, the neigh-
borhood, by the ideas prevailing in his town, state, and
country. It is an enormous simplification to speak of
the American mind. Every American has his own mind.
It is absurd to ascribe any achievements and virtues or
any misdeeds and vices of individual Americans to
America as such.

Most people are common men. They do not have
thoughts of their own; they are only receptive. They
do not create new ideas; they repeat what they have

192 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

heard and imitate what they have seen. If the world
were peopled only by such as these, there would not
be any change and any history. What produces change
is new ideas and actions guided by them. What distin-
guishes one group from another is the effect of such in-
novations. These innovations are not accomplished by
a group mind; they are always the achievements of in-
dividuals. What makes the American people different
from any other people is the joint effect produced by
the thoughts and actions of innumerable uncommon
Americans.

We know the names of the men who invented and
step by step perfected the motorcar. A historian can
write a detailed history of the evolution of the automo-
bile. We do not know the names of the men who, in the
beginnings of civilization, made the greatest inventions
— for example lighting a fire. But this ignorance does
not permit us to ascribe this fundamental invention to
a group mind. It is always an individual who starts a
new method of doing things, and then other people imi-
tate his example. Customs and fashions have always
been inaugurated by individuals and spread through
imitation by other people.

While the group-mind school tried to eliminate the
individual by ascribing activity to the mythical Volks-
geist, the Marxians were intent on the one hand upon
depreciating the individual's contribution and on the
other hand upon crediting innovations to common men.
Thus Marx observed that a critical history of technology
would demonstrate that none of the eighteenth cen-
tury's inventions was the achievement of a single indi-

CONCEPT OF HISTORICAL INDIVIDUALITY 193

vidual. 1 What does this prove? Nobody denies that tech-
nological progress is a gradual process, a chain of suc-
cessive steps performed by long lines of men each of
whom adds something to the accomplishments of his
predecessors. The history of every technological con-
trivance, when completely told, leads back to the most
primitive inventions made by cave dwellers in the ear-
liest ages of mankind. To choose any later starting point
is an arbitrary restriction of the whole tale. One may
begin a history of wireless telegraphy with Maxwell
and Hertz, but one may as well go back to the first ex-
periments with electricity or to any previous techno-
logical feats that had necessarily to precede the con-
struction of a radio network. All this does not in the
least affect the truth that each step forward was made
by an individual and not by some mythical impersonal
agency. It does not detract from the contributions of
Maxwell, Hertz, and Marconi to admit that they could
be made only because others had previously made other
contributions.

To illustrate the difference between the innovator
and the dull crowd of routinists who cannot even im-
agine that any improvement is possible, we need only
refer to a passage in Engels' most famous book. 2 Here,
in 1878, Engels apodictically announced that military
weapons are "now so perfected that no further progress
of any revolutionizing influence is any longer possible."
Henceforth "all further [technological] progress is by

1. Das Kapital, 1, 335, n. 89.

2. Herm Eugen Diihrings Umwiilzung der Wissenschaft, 7th ed.
Stuttgart, 1910.

194 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

and large indifferent for land warfare. The age of evo-
lution is in this regard essentially closed." 8 This com-
placent conclusion shows in what the achievement of
the innovator consists: he accomplishes what other peo-
ple believe to be unthinkable and unfeasible.

Engels, who considered himself an expert in the art
of warfare, liked to exemplify his doctrines by referring
to strategy and tactics. Changes in military tactics, he
declared, are not brought about by ingenious army
leaders. They are achievements of privates who are
usually cleverer than their officers. The privates invent
them by dint of their instincts (instinktmassig) and put
them into operation in spite of the reluctance of their
commanders. 4

Every doctrine denying to the "single paltry individ-
ual" 5 any role in history must finally ascribe changes
and improvements to the operation of instincts. As those
upholding such doctrines see it, man is an animal that
has the instinct to produce poems, cathedrals, and air-
planes. Civilization is the result of an unconscious and
unpremeditated reaction of man to external stimuli.
Each achievement is the automatic creation of an in-
stinct with which man has been endowed especially for
this purpose. There are as many instincts as there are
human achievements. It is needless to enter into a
critical examination of this fable invented by impotent
people for slighting the achievements of better men

3. Ibid., pp. 176-7.

4. Ibid., pp. 172-6.

5. Engels, Der Ursprung der Fomilie, des Privateigentums und des
Staates (6th ed. Stuttgart, 1894), p. 186.

CONCEPT OF HISTORICAL INDIVIDUALITY 195

and appealing to the resentment of the dull. Even on
the basis of this makeshift doctrine one cannot negate
the distinction between the man who had the instinct
to write the book On the Origin of Species and those
who lacked this instinct.

4. Planning History

Individuals act in order to bring about definite re-
sults. Whether they succeed or not depends on the suit-
ability of the means applied and the response their ac-
tions encounter on the part of fellow individuals. Very
often the outcome of an action differs considerably from
what the actor was eager to achieve. The margin within
which a man, however great, can act successfully is
narrow. No man can through his actions direct the
course of affairs for more than a comparatively short
period of the future, still less for all time to come.

Yet every action adds something to history, affects
the course of future events, and is in this sense a his-
torical fact. The most trivial performance of daily rou-
tine by dull people is no less a historical datum than is
the most startling innovation of the genius. The aggre-
gate of the unvarying repetition of traditional modes of
acting determines, as habits, customs and mores, the
course of events. The common man's historical role con-
sists in contributing a particle to the structure of the
tremendous power of consuetude.

History is made by men. The conscious intentional
actions of individuals, great and small, determine the
course of events insofar as it is the result of the inter-

196 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

action of all men. But the historical process is not de-
signed by individuals. It is the composite outcome of
the intentional actions of all individuals. No man can
plan history. All he can plan and try to put into effect
is his own actions which, jointly with the actions of
other men, constitute the historical process. The Pilgrim
Fathers did not plan to found the United States.

Of course, there have always been men who planned
for eternity. For the most part the failure of their de-
signs appeared very soon. Sometimes their construc-
tions lasted quite a while, but their effect was not what
the builders had planned. The monumental tombs of
the Egyptian kings still exist, but it was not the inten-
tion of their builders to make modern Egypt attractive
for tourists and to supply present-day museums with
mummies. Nothing demonstrates more emphatically the
temporal limitations on human planning than the ven-
erable ruins scattered about the surface of the earth.

Ideas live longer than walls and other material arti-
facts. We still enjoy the masterpieces of the poetry and
philosophy of ancient India and Greece. But they do
not mean for us what they meant to their authors. We
may wonder whether Plato and Aristotle would have
approved of the use later ages have made of their
thoughts.

Planning for eternity, to substitute an everlasting
state of stability, rigidity, and changelessness for histor-
ical evolution, is the theme of a special class of litera-
ture. The Utopian author wants to arrange future condi-
tions according to his own ideas and to deprive the rest
of mankind once and for all of the faculty to choose
and to act. One plan alone, viz., the authors plan,

CONCEPT OF HISTORICAL INDIVIDUALITY 197

should be executed and all other people be silenced.
The author, and after his death his successor, will
henceforth alone determine the course of events. There
will no longer be any history, as history is the composite
effect of the interaction of all men. The superhuman
dictator will rule the universe and reduce all other peo-
ple to pawns in his plans. He will deal with them as
the engineer deals with the raw materials out of which
he builds, a method pertinently called social engi-
neering.

Such projects are very popular nowadays. They en-
rapture the intellectuals. A few skeptics observe that
their execution is contrary to human nature. But their
supporters are confident that by suppressing all dis-
senters they can alter human nature. Then people will
be as happy as the ants are supposed to be in their hills.

The essential question is: Will all men be prepared
to yield to the dictator? Will nobody have the ambition
to contest his supremacy? Will nobody develop ideas at
variance with those underlying the dictator's plan? Will
all men, after thousands of years of "anarchy" in think-
ing and acting, tacitly submit to the tyranny of one or a
few despots?

It is possible that in a few years all nations will have
adopted the system of all-round planning and totali-
tarian regimentation. The number of opponents is very
small, and their direct political influence almost nil.
But even a victory of planning will not mean the end
of history. Atrocious wars among the candidates for the
supreme office will break out. Totalitarianism may wipe
out civilization, even the whole of the human race.
Then, of course, history will have come to its end too.

Chapter 10. Historicism

1. The Meaning of Historicism

Historicism developed from the end of the eight-
eenth century on as a reaction against the social phi-
losophy of rationalism. To the reforms and policies ad-
vocated by various authors of the Enlightenment it
opposed a program of preservation of existing institu-
tions and, sometimes, even of a return to extinct insti-
tutions. Against the postulates of reason it appealed to
the authority of tradition and the wisdom of ages gone
by. The main target of its critique was the ideas that
had inspired the American and the French Revolutions
and kindred movements in other countries. Its cham-
pions proudly called themselves antirevolutionary and
emphasized their rigid conservatism. But in later years
the political orientation of historicism changed. It be-
gan to regard capitalism and free trade — both domestic
and international — as the foremost evil, and joined
hands with the "radical" or "leftist" foes of the market
economy, aggressive nationalism on the one hand and
revolutionary socialism on the other. As far as histori-
cism still has actual political importance, it is ancillary
to socialism and to nationalism. Its conservatism has
almost withered away. It survives only in the doctrines
of some religious groups.

People have again and again stressed the congenial-
ity of historicism and artistic and literary romanticism.

198

HISTORICISM 199

The analogy is rather superficial. Both movements had
in common a taste for the conditions of ages gone by
and an extravagant overestimation of old customs and
institutions. But this enthusiasm for the past is not the
essential feature of historicism. Historicism is first of all
an epistemological doctrine and must be viewed as
such.

The fundamental thesis of historicism is the proposi-
tion that, apart from the natural sciences, mathematics,
and logic, there is no knowledge but that provided by
history. There is no regularity in the concatenation and
sequence of phenomena and events in the sphere of
human action. Consequently the attempts to develop
a science of economics and to discover economic laws
are vain. The only sensible method of dealing with hu-
man action, exploits, and institutions is the historical
method. The historian traces every phenomenon back
to its origins. He depicts the changes going on in human
affairs. He approaches his material, the records of the
past, without any prepossessions and preconceived
ideas. The historian utilizes sometimes, in preliminary,
merely technical, and ancillary examination of these
sources, the results of the natural sciences, as for in-
stance in determining the age of the material on which
a document of disputed authenticity is written. But in
his proper field, the exposition of past events, he does
not rely upon any other branch of knowledge. The
standards and general rules to which he resorts in deal-
ing with the historical material are to be abstracted
from this very material. They must not be borrowed
from any other source.

200 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PBOBLEMS OF HISTORY

The extravagance of these claims was later reduced
to a more modest measure when Dilthey stressed the
role psychology plays in the work of the historian. 1 The
champions of historicism accepted this restriction and
did not insist on their extreme description of the histor-
ical method. They were merely interested in the con-
demnation of economics and had no quarrel with psy-
chology.

If the historicists had been consistent, they would
have substituted economic history for the — in their
opinion counterfeit — science of economics. (We may
pass over the question how economic history could be
treated without economic theory.) But this would not
have served their political plans. What they wanted
was to propagandize for their interventionist or socialist
programs. The wholesale rejection of economics was
only one item in their strategy. It relieved them from
the embarrassment created by their inability to explode
the economists' devastating critique of socialism and
interventionism. But it did not in itself demonstrate
the soundness of a prosocialist or interventionist policy.
In order to justify their "unorthodox" leanings, the his-
toricists developed a rather self -contradictory discipline
to which various names were given such as realistic
or institutional or ethical economics, or the economic
aspects of political science (wirtschaftliche Staatswis-
senschaften) , 2

1. See below, p. 312.

2. For various other names suggested see Arthur Spiethoff in the
Preface to the English edition of his treatise on "Business Cycles,"
International Economic Papers, No. 3 (New York, 1953), p. 75.

HISTORICISM 201

Most champions of these schools of thought did not
bother about an epistemological explanation of their
procedures. Only a few tried to justify their method.
We may call their doctrine periodalism and their sup-
porters periodalists.

The main idea underlying all these attempts to con-
struct a quasi-economic doctrine that could be em-
ployed to justify policies fighting the market economy
was borrowed from positivism. As historicists the peri-
odalists talked indefatigably about something they
called the historical method, and claimed to be histor-
ians. But they adopted the essential tenets of positiv-
ism, which rejected history as useless and meaningless
chatter, and wanted to inaugurate in its place a new
science to be modeled after the pattern of Newtonian
mechanics. The periodalists accepted the thesis that it
is possible to derive from historical experience a pos-
teriori laws which, once they are discovered, will form
a new — not yet existing — science of social physics or
sociology or institutional economics.

Only in one regard did the periodalists' version of
this thesis differ from that of the positivists. The posi-
tivists had laws in mind that would be valid universally.
The periodalists believed that every period of history
has its own economic laws different from those of other
periods of economic history.

The periodalists distinguish various periods in the
course of historical events. Obviously the criterion ac-
cording to which this distinction is made is the charac-
teristics of the economic laws determining economic
becoming in each period. Thus the periodalists' argu-

202 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

ment moves in a circle. The periodization of economic
history presupposes knowledge of the economic laws
peculiar to each period, while these laws can only be
discovered by examining each period without any ref-
erence to the events that happened in other periods.

The periodalists' image of the course of history is
this: There are various periods or stages of economic
evolution succeeding one another according to a defi-
nite order; throughout each of these periods the eco-
nomic laws remain unchanged. Nothing is said about
the transition from one period to the next one. If we
assume that it is not brought about at one blow, we
must assume that between two periods there is an in-
terval of transition, a transition period as it were. What
happens in this interval? What kind of economic laws
are operative in it? Is it a time of lawlessness or has it
its own laws? Besides, if one assumes that the laws of
economic becoming are historical facts and therefore
changing in the flux of historical events, it is manifestly
contradictory to assert that there are periods in which
there is no change, i.e., periods in which there is no his-
tory, and that between two such periods of rest there
is a period of transition.

The same fallacy is also implied in the concept of a
present age as resorted to by contemporary pseudo
economics. Studies dealing with the economic history
of the recent past are mislabeled as dealing with pres-
ent economic conditions. If we refer to a definite length
of time as the present, we mean that in regard to a
special issue conditions remain unchanged throughout
this period. The concept of the present is therefore dif-

HISTORICISM 203

ferent for various fields of action. 8 Besides, it is never
certain how long this absence of change will last and
consequently how much of the future has to be in-
cluded. What a man can say about the future is always
merely speculative anticipation. Dealing with some
conditions of the recent past under the heading "present
conditions" is a misnomer. The most that can be said
is: Such were the conditions yesterday; we expect they
will remain unchanged for some time to come.

Economics deals with a regularity in the concatena-
tion and sequence of phenomena that is valid in the
whole field of human action. It can therefore contribute
to the elucidation of future events; it can predict within
the limits drawn to praxeological prediction. 4 If one
rejects the idea of an economic law necessarily valid for
all ages, one no longer has the possibility of discovering
any regularity that remains unchanged in the flux of
events. Then one can say no more than: If conditions
remain unchanged for some time, they will remain un-
changed. But whether or not they really remain un-
changed can only be known afterward.

The honest historicist would have to say: Nothing
can be asserted about the future. Nobody can know
how a definite policy will work in the future. All we
believe to know is how similar policies worked in the
past. Provided all relevant conditions remain un-
changed, we may expect that the future effects will not
widely differ from those of the past. But we do not
know whether or not these relevant conditions will re-

3. Mises, Human Action, p. 101.

4. Ibid., pp. 117-18. See below, p. 309.

204 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

main unchanged. Hence we cannot make any prognosti-
cation about the — necessarily future — effects of any
measure considered. We are dealing with the history of
the past, not with the history of the future.

A dogma supported by many historicists asserts that
tendencies of social and economic evolution as mani-
fested in the past, and especially in the recent past, will
prevail in the future too. Study of the past, they con-
clude, discloses therefore the shape of things to come.

Leaving aside all the metaphysical ideas with which
this trend-philosophy has been loaded, we have only to
realize that trends can change, have changed in the
past, and will change in the future too. 8 The historicist
does not know when the next change will occur. What
he can announce about trends refers only to the past,
never to the future.

Some of the German historicists liked to compare
their periodization of economic history with the periodi-
zation of the history of art. As the history of art deals
with the succession of various styles of artistic activities,
economic history deals with the succession of various
styles of economic activities (Wirtschaftsstile) . This
metaphor is neither better nor worse than other meta-
phors. But what the historicists who resorted to it failed
to say was that the historians of art talk only about the
styles of the past and do not develop doctrines about
the art styles of the future. However, the historicists are
writing and lecturing about the economic conditions of
the past only in order to derive from them conclusions

5. Mises, Planning for Freedom (South Holland, 111., 1952), pp.
163-0.

HISTORICISM 205

about economic policies that necessarily are directed
toward the economic conditions of the future.

2. The Rejection of Economics

As historicism sees it, the essential error of economics
consists in its assumption that man is invariably egoistic
and aims exclusively at material well-being.

According to Gunnar Myrdal economics asserts that
human actions are "solely motivated by economic in-
terests" and considers as economic interests "the desire
for higher incomes and lower prices and, in addition,
perhaps stability of earnings and employment, reason-
able time for leisure and an environment conducive to
its satisfactory use, good working conditions, etc." This,
he says, is an error. One does not completely account
for human motivations by simply registering economic
interests. What really determines human conduct is not
interests alone but attitudes. "Attitude means the emo-
tive disposition of an individual or a group to respond
in certain ways to actual or potential situations." There
are "fortunately many people whose attitudes are not
identical with their interests." 1

Now, the assertion that economics ever maintained
that men are solely motivated by the striving after
higher incomes and lower prices is false. Because of
their failure to disentangle the apparent paradox of the
use-value concept, the Classical economists and their

1. Gunnar Myrdal, The Political Element in the Development of
Economic Theory, trans, by P. Streeten (Cambridge, Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1954), pp. 199-200.

206 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

epigones were prevented from providing a satisfactory
interpretation of the conduct of the consumers. They
virtually dealt only with the conduct of the business-
men who serve the consumers and for whom the valua-
tions of their customers are the ultimate standard.
When they referred to the principle of buying on the
cheapest market and selling on the dearest market, they
were trying to interpret the actions of the businessman
in his capacity as a purveyor of the buyers, not in his
capacity as a consumer and spender of his own income.
They did not enter into an an Jysis of the motives
prompting the individual consumers to buy and to con-
sume. So they did not investigate whether individuals
try only to fill their bellies or whether they also spend
for other purposes, e.g., to perform what they consider
to be their ethical and religious duties. When they dis-
tinguished between purely economic motives and other
motives, the classical economists referred only to the
acquisitive side of human behavior. They never thought
of denying that men are also driven by other motives.

The approach of Classical economics appears highly
unsatisfactory from the point of view of modern subjec-
tive economics. Modern economics rejects as entirely
fallacious also the argument advanced for the epistemo-
logical justification of the Classical methods by their
last followers, especially John Stuart Mill. According to
this lame apology, pure economics deals only with the
"economic" aspect of the operations of mankind, only
with the phenomena of the production of wealth "as far
as those phenomena are not modified by the pursuit
of any other object." But, says Mill, in order to deal ade-

HISTORICISM 207

quately with reality "the didactic writer on the subject
will naturally combine in his exposition, with the truth
of pure science, as many of the practical modifications
as will, in his estimation, be most conducive to the use-
fulness of his work." 2 This certainly explodes Mr. Myr-
dal's assertion, so far as Classical economics is con-
cerned.

Modern economics traces all human actions back to
the value judgments of individuals. It never was so
foolish, as Myrdal charges, as to believe that all that
people are after is higher incomes and lower prices.
Against this unjustified criticism which has been re-
peated a hundred times, Bohm-Bawerk already in his
first contribution to the theory of value, and then later
again and again, explicitly emphasized that the term
"well-being" (Wohlfahrtszwecke) as he uses it in the
exposition of the theory of value does not refer only
to concerns commonly called egoistic but comprehends
everything that appears to an individual as desirable
and worthy of being aimed at ( erstrebenswert ) . s

In acting man prefers some things to other things,
and chooses between various modes of conduct. The
result of the mental process that makes a man prefer
one thing to another thing is called a judgment of value.
In speaking of value and valuations economics refers to
such judgments of value, whatever their content may

2. John Stuart Mill, Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Politi-
cal Economy (3d ed. London, 1877), pp. 140-1.

3. Bohm-Bawerk, "Grundzuge der Theorie des wirtschaftlichen
Guterwerts," Jahrbucher fiir Nationalokonomie und Statistik, N.F.,
13 (1886), 479, n. 1; Kapital und Kapitalzins (3d ed. Innsbruck,
1909), 2, 316-17, n. 1.

208 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

be. It is irrelevant for economics, up to now the best
developed part of praxeology, whether an individual
aims like a member of a labor union at higher wages or
like a saint at the best performance of religious duties.
The "institutional" fact that most people are eager to
get more tangible good is a datum of economic history,
not a theorem of economics.

All brands of historicism — the German and the Brit-
ish historical schools of the social sciences, American
institutionalism, the adepts of Sismondi, Le Play, and
Veblen, and many kindred "unorthodox" sects — em-
phatically reject economics. But their writings are full
of inferences drawn from general propositions about
the effects of various modes of acting. It is, of course,
impossible to deal with any "institutional" or historical
problem without referring to such general propositions.
Every historical report, no matter whether its theme is
the conditions and events of a remote past or those of
yesterday, is inevitably based on a definite kind of eco-
nomic theory. The historicists do not eliminate eco-
nomic reasoning from their treatises. While rejecting
an economic doctrine they do not like, they resort in
dealing with events to fallacious doctrines long since
refuted by the economists.

The theorems of economics, say the historicists, are
void because they are the product of a priori reasoning.
Only historical experience can lead to realistic econom-
ics. They fail to see that historical experience is always
the experience of complex phenomena, of the joint
effects brought about by the operation of a multiplicity
of elements. Such historical experience does not give

HISTORICISM 209

the observer facts in the sense in which the natural sci-
ences apply this term to the results obtained in labora-
tory experiments. ( People who call their offices, studies,
and libraries "laboratories" for research in economics,
statistics, or the social sciences are hopelessly muddle-
headed. ) Historical facts need to be interpreted on the
ground of previously available theorems. They do not
comment upon themselves.

The antagonism between economics and historicism
does not concern the historical facts. It concerns the
interpretation of the facts. In investigating and narrat-
ing facts a scholar may provide a valuable contribution
to history, but he does not contribute to the increase
and perfection of economic knowledge.

Let us once more refer to the often repeated proposi-
tion that what the economists call economic laws are
merely principles governing conditions under capital-
ism and of no avail for a differently organized society,
especially not for the coming socialist management of
affairs. As these critics see it, it is only the capitalists
with their acquisitiveness who bother about costs and
about profit. Once production for use has been substi-
tuted for production for profit, the categories of cost
and profit will become meaningless. The primary error
of economics consists in considering these and other
categories as eternal principles determining action un-
der any kind of institutional conditions.

However, cost is an element in any kind of human
action, whatever the particular features of the individ-
ual case may be. Cost is the value of those things the
actor renounces in order to attain what he wants to

210 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

attain; it is the value he attaches to the most urgently
desired satisfaction among those satisfactions which he
cannot have because he preferred another to it. It is
the price paid for a thing. If a young man says: "This
examination cost me a week end with friends in the
country," he means: "If I had not chosen to prepare for
my examination, I would have spent this week end with
friends in the country." Things it costs no sacrifice to
attain are not economic goods but free goods and as
such no objects of any action. Economics does not deal
with them. Man does not have to choose between them
and other satisfactions.

Profit is the difference between the higher value of
the good obtained and the lower value of the good
sacrificed for its obtainment. If the action, due to bun-
gling, error, an unanticipated change in conditions, or
to other circumstances, results in obtaining something
to which the actor attaches a lower value than to the
price paid, the action generates a loss. Since action
invariably aims to substitute a state of affairs which the
actor considers as more satisfactory for a state which he
considers less satisfactory, action always aims at profit
and never at loss. This is valid not only for the actions
of individuals in a market economy but no less for the
actions of the economic director of a socialist society.

3. The Quest for Laws of Historical Change

A widespread error confuses historicism and history.
Yet the two have nothing in common. History is the
presentation of the course of past events and conditions,

HISTORICISM 211

a statement of facts and of their effects. Historicism is
an epistemological doctrine.

Some schools of historicism have declared that his-
tory is the only way to deal with human action and
have denied the adequacy, possibility, and meaning-
fulness of a general theoretical science of human action.
Other schools have condemned history as unscientific
and, paradoxically enough, have developed a sympa-
thetic attitude toward the negative part of the doctrines
of the positivists, who asked for a new science which,
modeled on the pattern of Newtonian physics, should
derive from historical experience laws of historical ev-
olution and of "dynamic" change.

The natural sciences have developed, on the basis of
Carnot's second law of thermodynamics, a doctrine
about the course of the history of the universe. Free
energy capable of work depends on thermodynamic in-
stability. The process producing such energy is irrever-
sible. Once all free energy produced by unstable systems
is exhausted, life and civilization will cease. In the light
of this cognition the universe as we know it appears as
an evanescent episode in the flux of eternity. It moves
toward its own extinction.

But the law from which this inference is drawn, Car-
not's second law, is in itself not a historical or dynamic
law. Like all other laws of the natural sciences, it is de-
rived from the observation of phenomena and verified
by experiments. We call it a law because it describes a
process that repeats itself whenever the conditions for
its operation are present. The process is irreversible,
and from this fact scientists infer that the conditions

212 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

for its operation will no longer be given once all thermo-
dynamic instability has disappeared.

The notion of a law of historical change is self-
contradictory. History is a sequence of phenomena that
are characterized by their singularity. Those features
which an event has in common with other events are
not historical. What murder cases have in common re-
fers to penal law, to psychology, to the technique of
killing. As historical events the assassination of Julius
Caesar and that of Henri IV of France are entirely dif-
ferent. The importance of an event for the production
of further events is what counts for history. This effect
of an event is unique and unrepeatable. Seen from the
point of view of American constitutional law, the presi-
dential elections of 1860 and of 1956 belong to the same
class. For history they are two distinct events in the
flux of affairs. If a historian compares them, he does so
in order to elucidate the differences between them, not
in order to discover laws that govern any instance of an
American presidential election. Sometimes people for-
mulate certain rules of thumb concerning such elec-
tions, as for instance: the party in power wins if business
is booming. These rules are an attempt to understand
the conduct of the voters. Nobody ascribes to them the
necessity and apodictic validity which is the essential
logical feature of a law of the natural sciences. Every-
body is fully aware that the voters might proceed in a
different way.

Carnot's second law is not the result of a study of
the history of the universe. It is a proposition about phe-
nomena that are repeated daily and hourly in precisely

HISTORICISM 213

the way the law describes. From this law science de-
duces certain consequences concerning the future of the
universe. This deduced knowledge is in itself not a law.
It is the application of a law. It is a prognostication
of future events made on the basis of a law that de-
scribes what is believed to be an inexorable necessity
in the sequence of repeatable and repeated events.

Neither is Darwin's principle of natural selection a
law of historical evolution. It tries to explain biological
change as the outcome of the operation of a biological
law. It interprets the past, it does not prognosticate
things to come. Although the operation of the principle
of natural selection may be considered as perennial, it is
not permissible to infer that man must inevitably de-
velop into a sort of superman. A line of evolutionary
change may lead into a dead end beyond which there
is no further change at all or a retrogression to previous
states.

As it is impossible to deduce any general laws from
the observation of historical change, the program of
"dynamic" historicism could only be realized by dis-
covering that the operation of one or several praxeolog-
ical laws must inevitably result in the emergence of
definite conditions of the future. Praxeology and its
until now best-developed branch, economics, never
claimed to know anything about such matters. Histori-
cism, on account of its rejection of praxeology, was
from the outset prevented from embarking upon such a
study.

Everything that has been said about future historical
events, inevitably bound to come, stems from prophe-

214 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

cies elaborated by the metaphysical methods of the
philosophy of history. By dint of intuition the author
guesses the plans of the prime mover, and all uncer-
tainty about the future disappears. The author of the
Apocalypse, Hegel and, above all, Marx held them-
selves to be perfectly familiar with the laws of historical
evolution. But the source of their knowledge was not
science; it was the revelation of an inner voice.

4. Historicist Relativism

The ideas of historicism can be understood only if
one takes into account that they sought exclusively
one end: to negate everything that rationalist social
philosophy and economics had established. In this pur-
suit many historicists did not shrink from any absurdity.
Thus to the statement of the economists that there is
an inevitable scarcity of nature-given factors upon which
human well-being depends they opposed the fantastic
assertion that there is abundance and plenty. What
brings about poverty and want, they say, is the inade-
quacy of social institutions.

When the economists referred to progress, they looked
upon conditions from the point of view of the ends
sought by acting men. There was nothing metaphysical
in their concept of progress. Most men want to live and
to prolong their lives; they want to be healthy and to
avoid sickness; they want to live comfortably and not to
exist on the verge of starvation. In the eyes of acting
men advance toward these goals means improvement,
the reverse means impairment. This is the meaning of

HISTORICISM 215

the terms "progress" and "retrogression" as applied by
economists. In this sense they call a drop in infant mor-
tality or success in fighting contagious diseases progress.

The question is not whether such progress makes peo-
ple happy. It makes them happier than they would
otherwise have been. Most mothers feel happier if their
children survive, and most people feel happier without
tuberculosis than with it. Looking upon conditions from
his personal point of view, Nietzsche expressed mis-
givings about the "much too many." But the objects of
his contempt thought differently.

In dealing with the means to which men resorted in
their actions history as well as economics distinguishes
between means which were fit to attain the ends sought
and those which were not. In this sense progress is the
substitution of more suitable methods of action for less
suitable. Historicism takes offense at this terminology.
All things are relative and must be viewed from the
point of view of their age. Yet no champion of histori-
cism has the boldness to contend that exorcism ever
was a suitable means to cure sick cows. But the histori-
cists are less cautious in dealing with economics. For
instance, they declare that what economics teaches
about the effects of price control is inapplicable to the
conditions of the Middle Ages. The historical works of
authors imbued with the ideas of historicism are mud-
dled precisely on account of their rejection of eco-
nomics.

While emphasizing that they do not want to judge
the past by any preconceived standard, the historicists
in fact try to justify the policies of the "good old days."

216 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

Instead of approaching the theme of their studies with
the best mental equipment available, they rely upon
the fables of pseudo economics. They cling to the super-
stition that decreeing and enforcing maximum prices
below the height of the potential prices which the un-
hampered market would fix is a suitable means to im-
prove the conditions of the buyers. They omit to men-
tion the documentary evidence of the failure of the just
price policy and of its effects which, from the point of
view of the rulers who resorted to it, were more un-
desirable than the previous state of affairs which they
were designed to alter.

One of the vain reproaches heaped by historicists on
the economists is their alleged lack of historical sense.
Economists, they say, believe that it would have been
possible to improve the material conditions of earlier
ages if only people had been familiar with the theories
of modern economics. Now, there can be no doubt that
the conditions of the Roman Empire would have been
considerably affected if the emperors had not resorted
to currency debasement and had not adopted a policy
of price ceilings. It is no less obvious that the mass
penury in Asia was caused by the fact that the despotic
governments nipped in the bud all endeavors to accum-
ulate capital. The Asiatics, unlike the Western Euro-
peans, did not develop a legal and constitutional system
which would have provided the opportunity for large-
scale capital accumulation. And the public, actuated by
the old fallacy that a businessman's wealth is the cause
of other people's poverty, applauded whenever rulers
confiscated the holdings of successful merchants.

HISTORICISM 217

The economists have always been aware that the ev-
olution of ideas is a slow, time-consuming process. The
history of knowledge is the account of a series of suc-
cessive steps made by men each of whom adds some-
thing to the thoughts of his predecessors. It is not sur-
prising that Democritus of Abdera did not develop the
quantum theory or that the geometry of Pythagoras and
Euclid is different from that of Hilbert. Nobody ever
thought that a contemporary of Pericles could have cre-
ated the free-trade philosophy of Hume, Adam Smith,
and Ricardo and converted Athens into an emporium of
capitalism.

There is no need to analyze the opinion of many his-
toricists that to the soul of some nations the practices
of capitalism appear so repulsive that they will never
adopt them. If there are such peoples, they will forever
remain poor. There is but one road that leads toward
prosperity and freedom. Can any historicist on the
ground of historical experience contest this truth?

No general rules about the effects of various modes
of action and of definite social institutions can be de-
rived from historical experience. In this sense the fa-
mous dictum is true that the study of history can teach
only one thing: viz., that nothing can be learned from
history. We could therefore agree with the historicists
in not paying much attention to the indisputable fact
that no people ever raised itself to a somewhat satis-
factory state of welfare and civilization without the in-
stitution of private ownership of the means of produc-
tion. It is not history but economics that clarifies our
thoughts about the effects of property rights. But we

218 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTOHY

must entirely reject the reasoning, very popular with
many nineteenth-century writers, that the alleged fact
that the institution of private property was unknown
to peoples in primitive stages of civilization is a valid
argument in favor of socialism. Having started as the
harbingers of a future society which will wipe out all
that is unsatisfactory and will transform the earth into
a paradise, many socialists, for instance Engels, virtu-
ally became advocates of a return to the supposedly
blissful conditions of a fabulous golden age of the re-
mote past.

It never occurred to the historicists that man must
pay a price for every achievement. People pay the price
if they believe that the benefits derived from the thing
to be acquired outweigh the disadvantages resulting
from the sacrifice of something else. In dealing with
this issue historicism adopts the illusions of romantic
poetry. It sheds tears about the defacement of nature
by civilization. How beautiful were the untouched vir-
gin forests, the waterfalls, the solitary shores before the
greed of acquisitive people spoiled their beauty! The
romantic historicists pass over in silence the fact that
the forests were cut down in order to win arable land
and the falls were utilized to produce power and light.
There is no doubt that Coney Island was more idyllic
in the days of the Indians than it is today. But in its
present state it gives millions of New Yorkers an oppor-
tunity to refresh themselves which they cannot get else-
where. Talk about the magnificence of untouched nature
is idle if it does not take into account what man has got
by "desecrating" nature. The earth's marvels were cer-

HISTORICISM 219

tainly splendid when visitors seldom set foot upon them.
Commercially organized tourist traffic made them ac-
cessible to the many. The man who thinks "What a pity
not to be alone on this peak! Intruders spoil my pleas-
ure," fails to remember that he himself probably would
not be on the spot if business had not provided all the
facilities required.

The technique of the historicists' indictment of cap-
italism is simple indeed. They take all its achievements
for granted, but blame it for the disappearance of some
enjoyments that are incompatible with it and for some
imperfections which still may disfigure its products.
They forget that mankind has had to pay a price for its
achievements — a price paid willingly because people
believe that the gain derived, e.g., the prolongation of
the average length of life, is more to be desired.

5. Dissolving History

History is a sequence of changes. Every historical sit-
uation has its individuality, its own characteristics that
distinguish it from any other situation. The stream of
history never returns to a previously occupied point.
History is not repetitious.

Stating this fact is not to express any opinion about
the biological and anthropological problem of whether
mankind is descended from a common human ancestry.
There is no need to raise the question here whether the
transformation of subhuman primates into the species
Homo sapiens occurred only once at a definite time and
in a definite part of the earth's surface or came to pass

220 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

several times and resulted in the emergence of various
original races. Neither does the establishment of this
fact mean that there is such a thing as unity of civiliza-
tion. Even if we assume that all men are scions of a
common human ancestry, there remains the fact that
the scarcity of the means of sustenance brought about
a dispersal of people over the globe. This dispersal re-
sulted in the segregation of various groups. Each of
these groups had to solve for itself man's specific prob-
lem of life: how to pursue the conscious striving after
improvement of conditions warranting survival. Thus
various civilizations emerged. It will probably never be
known to what extent definite civilizations were iso-
lated and independent of one another. But it is certain
that for thousands of years instances of such cultural
isolation existed. It was only the explorations of Euro-
pean navigators and travelers that finally put an end
to it.

Many civilizations came to an impasse. They either
were destroyed by foreign conquerors or disintegrated
from within. Next to the ruins of marvelous structures
the progeny of their builders live in poverty and ig-
norance. The cultural achievements of their forefathers,
their philosophy, technology, and often even their lan-
guage have fallen into oblivion, and the people have
relapsed into barbarism. In some cases the literature of
the extinct civilization has been preserved and, redis-
covered by scholars, has influenced later generations
and civilizations.

Other civilizations developed to a certain point and
then came to a standstill. They were arrested, as Bage-

HISTORICISM 221

hot said. 1 The people tried to preserve the achievements
of the past but they no longer planned to add anything
new to them.

A firm tenet of eighteenth-century social philosophy
was meliorism. Once the superstitions, prejudices, and
errors that caused the downfall of older civilizations
have given way to the supremacy of reason, there will
be a steady improvement of human conditions. The
world will become better every day. Mankind will
never return to the dark ages. Progress toward higher
stages of well-being and knowledge is irresistible. All
reactionary movements are doomed to failure. Present-
day philosophy no longer indulges in such optimistic
views. We realize that our civilization too is vulnerable.
True, it is safe against external attacks on the part of
foreign barbarians. But it could be destroyed from
within by domestic barbarians.

Civilization is the product of human effort, the
achievement of men eager to fight the forces adverse to
their well-being. This achievement is dependent on
men's using suitable means. If the means chosen are not
fit to produce the ends sought, disaster results. Bad pol-
icies can disintegrate our civilization as they have de-
stroyed many other civilizations. But neither reason
nor experience warrants the assumption that we cannot
avoid choosing bad policies and thereby wrecking our
civilization.

There are doctrines hypostatizing the notion of civ-
ilization. In their view a civilization is a sort of living
being. It comes into existence, thrives for some time,

1. Walter Bagehot, Physics and Politics (London, 1872), p. 212.

222 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

and finally dies. All civilizations, however different
they may appear to the superficial observer, have the
same structure. They must necessarily pass through the
same sequence of successive stages. There is no history.
What is mistakenly called history is in fact the repe-
tition of events belonging to the same class; is, as
Nietzsche put it, eternal recurrence.

The idea is very old and can be traced back to an-
cient philosophy. It was adumbrated by Giovanni Bat-
tista Vico. It played some role in the attempts of several
economists to develop schemes of parallelisms of the
economic history of various nations. It owes its present
popularity to Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West.
Softened to some extent and thereby rendered incon-
sistent, it is the main idea of the voluminous Study of
History on which Arnold J. Toynbee is still working.
There is no doubt that both Spengler and Toynbee were
prompted by the widespread disparagement of capital-
ism. Spengler's motive clearly was to prognosticate the
inevitable breakdown of our civilization. Although un-
affected by the chiliastic prophecies of the Marxians, he
was himself a socialist and entirely under the sway of
the socialists' vilification of the market economy. He
was judicious enough to see the disastrous implications
of the policies of the German Marxians. But, lacking
any economic knowledge and even full of contempt for
economics, he came to the conclusion that our civiliza-
tion has to choose between two evils each of which is
bound to destroy it. The doctrines of both Spengler and
Toynbee show clearly the poor results engendered by
neglect of economics in any treatment of human con-

HISTORICISM 223

cems. True, Western civilization is decadent. But its de-
cadence consists precisely in the endorsement of the
anticapitalistic creed.

What we may call the Spengler doctrine dissolves
history into the record of the life span of individual
entities, the various civilizations. We are not told in
precise terms what marks characterize an individual
civilization as such and distinguish it from another civ-
ilization. All that we learn about this essential matter
is metaphorical. A civilization is like a biological being;
it is born, grows, matures, decays, and dies. Such anal-
ogies are no substitute for unambiguous clarification
and definition.

Historical research cannot deal with all things to-
gether; it must divide and subdivide the totality of
events. Out of the whole body of history it carves sep-
arate chapters. The principles applied in so doing are
determined by the way the historian understands things
and events, value judgments and the actions prompted
by them and the relation of actions to the further course
of affairs. Almost all historians agree in dealing sepa-
rately with the history of various more or less isolated
peoples and civilizations. Differences of opinion about
the application of this procedure to definite problems
must be decided by careful examination of each indi-
vidual case. No epistemological objection can be raised
to the idea of distinguishing various civilizations within
the totality of history.

But what the Spengler doctrine means is something
entirely different. In its context a civilization is a Gestalt,
a whole, an individuality of a distinct nature. What de-

224 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

termines its origin, changes, and extinction stems from
its own nature. It is not the ideas and actions of the
individuals that constitute the historical process. There
is in fact no historical process. On the earth civilizations
come into being, live for some time, and then die just
as various specimens of every plant species are born,
live, and wither away. Whatever men may do is irrele-
vant to the final outcome. Every civilization must decay
and die.

There is no harm in comparing different historical
events and different events that occurred in the history
of various civilizations. But there is no justification
whatever for the assertion that every civilization must
pass through a sequence of inevitable stages.

Mr. Toynbee is inconsistent enough not to deprive us
entirely of any hope for the survival of our civilization.
While the whole and only content of his study is to
point out that the process of civilization consists of pe-
riodic repetitive movements, he adds that this "does not
imply that the process itself is of the same cyclical order
as they are." Having taken pains to show that sixteen
civilizations have perished already and nine others are
at the point of death, he expresses a vague optimism
concerning the future of the twenty-sixth civilization. 2

History is the record of human action. Human action
is the conscious effort of man to substitute more satis-
factory conditions for less satisfactory ones. Ideas de-
determine what are to be considered more and less
satisfactory conditions and what means are to be re-

2. A. J. Toynbee, A Study of History, Abridgment of Volumes
I-VI by D. C. Somervell (Oxford University Press, 1947), p. 254.

HISTORICISM 225

sorted to to alter them. Thus ideas are the main theme of
the study of history. Ideas are not an invariable stock
that existed from the very beginning of things and that
does not change. Every idea originated at a definite
point of time and space in the head of an individual.
(Of course, it has happened again and again that the
same idea originated independently in the heads of var-
ious individuals at various points of time and space.)
The genesis of every new idea is an innovation; it adds
something new and unheard of before to the course of
world affairs. The reason history does not repeat itself
is that every historical state is the consummation of the
operation of ideas different from those that operated in
other historical states.

Civilization differs from the mere biological and phys-
iological aspects of life in being an offshoot of ideas.
The essence of civilization is ideas. If we try to distin-
guish different civilizations, the differentia specified can
be found only in the different meanings of the ideas
that determined them. Civilizations differ from one an-
other precisely in the quality of the substance that char-
acterizes them as civilizations. In their essential struc-
ture they are unique individuals, not members of a class.
This forbids us to compare their vicissitudes with the
physiological process going on in an individual man's or
animal's life. In every animal body the same physiolog-
ical changes come to pass. A child ripens in the mother's
womb, it is delivered, grows, matures, decays, and dies
in the consummation of the same cycle of life. It is
quite another thing with civilizations. In being civiliza-
tions they are disparate and incommensurable because

226 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

they are actuated by different ideas and therefore de-
velop in different ways.

Ideas must not be classified without regard to the
soundness of their content. Men have had different
ideas concerning the cure of cancer. Up to now none
of these ideas has produced fully satisfactory results.
But this would not justify the inference that therefore
future attempts to cure cancer will also be futile. The
historian of past civilizations may declare: There was
something wrong with the ideas upon which those civ-
ilizations that decayed from within were built. But he
must not derive from this fact the conclusion that other
civilizations, built on different ideas, are also doomed.
Within the body of animals and plants forces are op-
erating that are bound to disintegrate it eventually. No
such forces could be discovered in the "body" of a civ-
ilization which would not be the outcome of its partic-
ular ideologies.

No less vain are efforts to search in the history of
various civilizations for parallelisms or identical stages
in their life span. We may compare the history of vari-
ous peoples and civilizations. But such comparisons
must deal not only with similarities but also with differ-
ences. The eagerness to discover similarities induces
authors to neglect or even to conjure away discrepan-
cies. The first task of the historian is to deal with his-
torical events. Comparisons made afterward on the
basis of a knowledge of events as perfect as possible
may be harmless or sometimes even instructive. Com-
parisons that accompany or even precede study of the
sources create confusion if not outright fables.

HISTORICISM 227

6. Undoing History

There have always been people who exalted the good
old days and advocated a return to the happy past. The
resistance offered to legal and constitutional innova-
tions by those whom they hurt has frequently crystal-
lized in programs that requested a reconstruction of
old institutions or presumably old institutions. In some
cases reforms that aimed at something essentially new
have been recommended as a restoration of ancient law.
An eminent example was provided by the role Magna
Charta played in the ideologies of England's seven-
teenth-century anti-Stuart parties.

But it was historicism which for the first time frankly
suggested unmaking historical changes and returning to
extinct conditions of a remote past. We need not deal
with the lunatic fringe of this movement, such as Ger-
man attempts to revive the cult of Wodan. Neither do
the sartorial aspects of these tendencies deserve more
than ironical comments. (A magazine picture showing
members of the Hanover-Coburg family parading in
the garb of the Scottish clansmen who fought at Cullo-
den would have startled the "Butcher" Cumberland.)
Only the linguistic and economic issues involved re-
quire attention.

In the course of history many languages have been
submerged. Some disappeared completely without leav-
ing any trace. Others are preserved in old documents,
books, and inscriptions and can be studied by scholars.
Several of these "dead" languages — Sanskrit, Hebrew,

228 EPISTBMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

Greek, and Latin — influence contemporary thought
through the philosophical and poetical value of the
ideas expressed in their literature. Others are merely
objects of philological research.

The process that resulted in the extinction of a lan-
guage was in many cases merely linguistic growth and
transformation of the spoken word. A long succession
of slight changes altered the phonetic forms, the vocab-
ulary, and the syntax so thoroughly that later genera-
tions could no longer read the documents bequeathed
by their ancestors. The vernacular developed into a new
distinct language. The old tongue could only be under-
stood by those with special training. The death of the
old language and the birth of the new one were the
outcome of a slow, peaceful evolution.

But in many cases linguistic change was the outcome
of political and military events. People speaking a for-
eign language acquired political and economic hegem-
ony either by military conquest or by the superiority
of their civilization. Those speaking the native tongue
were relegated to a subordinate position. On account
of their social and political disabilities it did not matter
very much what they had to say and how they said it.
Important business was transacted exclusively in the
language of their masters. Rulers, courts, church, and
schools employed only this language; it was the lan-
guage of the laws and the literature. The old native
tongue was used only by the uneducated populace.
Whenever one of these underlings wanted to rise to a
better position, he had first to leam the language of

HISTOBICISM 229

the masters. The vernacular was reserved to the dullest
and the least ambitious; it fell into contempt and finally
into oblivion. A foreign language superseded the native
idiom.

The political and military events that actuated this
linguistic process were in many cases characterized by
tyrannical cruelty and pitiless persecution of all oppo-
nents. Such methods met with the approval of some
philosophers and moralists of precapitalistic ages, as
they have sometimes won the praise of contemporary
"idealists" when the socialists resort to them. But to the
"spurious rationalistic dogmatism of the orthodox lib-
eral doctrinaires" they appear shocking. The historical
writings of the latter lacked that lofty relativism which
induced self-styled "realistic" historians to explain and
to justify all that had happened in the past and to vin-
dicate surviving oppressive institutions. (As one critic
reproachfully observed, in the utilitarians "old institu-
tions awake no thrill; they are simply embodiments of
prejudice.") * It does not need any further explanation
why the descendants of the victims of those persecu-
tions and oppressions judged in a different way the ex-
perience of their ancestors, still less why they were in-
tent upon abolishing those effects of past despotism
which still hurt them. In some cases, not content with
eliminating still existing oppression, they planned to
undo also such changes as did not harm them any
longer, however detrimental and malignant the proc-

1. Leslie Stephens, The English Utilitarians (London, 1900), 3,
70 (on J. Stuart Mill).

230 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

ess that had brought them about had been in a distant
past. It is precisely this that the attempts to undo lin-
guistic changes aim at.

The best example is provided by Ireland. Aliens had
invaded and conquered the country, expropriated the
landowners, destroyed its civilization, organized a des-
potic regime, and tried to convert the people by force
of arms to a religious creed which they despised. The
establishment of an alien church did not succeed in
making the Irish abandon Roman Catholicism. But the
English language superseded the native Gaelic idiom.
When later the Irish succeeded step by step in curbing
their foreign oppressors and finally acquiring political
independence, most of them were no longer linguis-
tically different from the English. They spoke English
and their eminent writers wrote English books some of
which are among the outstanding works of modern
world literature.

This state of affairs hurts the feelings of many Irish.
They want to induce their fellow citizens to return to
the idiom their ancestors spoke in ages gone by. There
is little open opposition to these pursuits. Few people
have the courage to fight a popular movement openly,
and radical nationalism is today, next to socialism, the
most popular ideology. Nobody wants to risk being
branded an enemy of his nation. But powerful forces
are silently resisting the linguistic reform. People cling
to the tongue they speak no matter whether those who
want to suppress it are foreign despots or domestic
zealots. The modern Irish are fully aware of the ad-
vantages they derive from the fact that English is the

HISTORICISM 231

foremost language of contemporary civilization, which
everyone has to learn in order to read many important
books or to play a role in international trade, in world
affairs, and in great ideological movements. Precisely
because the Irish are a civilized nation whose authors
write not for a limited audience but for all educated
people, the chances of a substitution of Gaelic for Eng-
lish are slim. No nostalgic sentimentality can alter these
circumstances.

It must be mentioned that the linguistic pursuits of
Irish nationalism were prompted by one of the most
widely adopted political doctrines of the nineteenth
century. The principle of nationality as accepted by all
the peoples of Europe postulates that every linguistic
group must form an independent state and that this
state must embrace all people speaking the same lan-
guage. 2 From the point of view of this principle an
English-speaking Ireland should belong to the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the mere
existence of an independent Irish Free State appears
irregular. The prestige which the principle of national-
ity enjoyed in Europe was so enormous that various
peoples who desired to form a state of their own the in-
dependence of which was at variance with it tried to
change their language in order to justify their aspira-
tions in its light. This explains the attitude of the Irish
nationalists, but it does not affect what has been said
about the implications of their linguistic plans.

A language is not simply a collection of phonetic

2. Mises, Omnipotent Government (New Haven, Yale University
Press, 1944), pp. 84-9.

232 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

signs. It is an instrument of thinking and acting. Its vo-
cabulary and grammar are adjusted to the mentality of
the individuals whom it serves. A living language —
spoken, written, and read by living men — changes con-
tinually in conformity with changes occurring in the
minds of those who use it. A language fallen into desue-
tude is dead because it no longer changes. It mirrors
the mentality of people long since passed away. It is
useless to the people of another age no matter whether
these people are biologically the scions of those who
once used it or merely believe themselves to be their
descendants. The trouble is not with the terms signify-
ing tangible things. Such terms could be supplemented
by neologisms. It is the abstract terms that provide in-
soluble problems. The precipitate of a people's ideolog-
ical controversies, of their ideas concerning issues of
pure knowledge and religion, legal institutions, political
organization, and economic activities, these terms re-
flect all the vicissitudes of their history. In learning their
meaning the rising generation are initiated into the
mental environment in which they have to live and to
work. This meaning of the various words is in continual
flux in response to changes in ideas and conditions.

Those who want to revive a dead language must in
fact create out of its phonetic elements a new language
whose vocabulary and syntax are adjusted to the con-
ditions of the present age, entirely different from those
of the old age. The tongue of their ancestors is of no
use to the modern Irish. The laws of present-day Ire-
land could not be written in the old vocabulary; Shaw,
Joyce, and Yeats could not have employed it in their

HISTORICISM 233

plays, novels, and poems. One cannot wipe out history
and return to the past.

Different from the attempts to revive dead idioms
are the plans to elevate local dialects to the position
of a language of literature and other manifestations of
thinking and acting. When communication between the
various parts of a nation's territory was infrequent on
account of the paucity of the interlocal division of labor
and the primitiveness of transportation facilities, there
was a tendency toward a disintegration of linguistic
unity. Different dialects developed out of the tongue
spoken by the people who had settled in an area. Some-
times these dialects evolved into a distinct literary lan-
guage, as was the case with the Dutch language. In
other cases only one of the dialects became a literary
language, while the others remained idioms employed
in daily life but not used in the schools, the courts, in
books, and in the conversation of educated people. Such
was the outcome in Germany, for instance, where the
writings of Luther and the Protestant theologians gave
the idiom of the "Saxon Chancellery" a preponderant
position and reduced all other dialects to subordinate
rank.

Under the impact of historicism movements sprang
up which aim at undoing this process by elevating dia-
lects into literary languages. The most remarkable of
these tendencies is Felibrige, the design to restore to
the Provencal tongue the eminence it once enjoyed as
Langue d'Oc. The F^librists, led by the distinguished
poet Mistral, were judicious enough not to plan a com-
plete substitution of their idiom for French. But even

234 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PBOBLEMS OF HISTORY

the prospects of their more moderate ambition, to cre-
ate a new Provencal poesy, seem to be inauspicious.
One cannot imagine any of the modern French master-
pieces composed in Provencal.

Local dialects of various languages have been em-
ployed in novels and plays depicting the life of the un-
educated. There is often an inherent insincerity in such
writings. The author condescendingly puts himself on
a level with people whose mentality he never shared
or has since outgrown. He behaves like an adult who
condescends to write books for children. No present-
day work of literature can withdraw itself from the im-
pact of the ideologies of our age. Once having gone
through the schools of these ideologies, an author can-
not successfully masquerade as a simple common man
and adopt his speech and his world view.

History is an irreversible process.

7. Undoing Economic History

The history of mankind is the record of a progressive
intensification of the division of labor. Animals live in
perfect autarky of each individual or of each quasi
family. What made cooperation between men possible
is the fact that work performed under the division of
tasks is more productive than the isolated efforts of au-
tarkic individuals and that man's reason is capable of
conceiving this truth. But for these two facts men would
have remained forever solitary food-seekers, forced by
an inevitable law of nature to fight one another without
pity and pardon. No social bonds, no feelings of sym-

HISTORICISM 235

pathy, benevolence, and friendship, no civilization
would have developed in a world in which everybody
had to see in all other men rivals in the biological com-
petition for a strictly limited supply of food.

One of the greatest achievements of eighteenth-cen-
tury social philosophy is the disclosure of the role
which the principle of higher productivity resulting
from division of labor has played in history. It was
against these teachings of Smith and Ricardo that the
most passionate attacks of historicism were directed.

The operation of the principle of division of labor
and its corollary, cooperation, tends ultimately toward
a world-embracing system of production. Insofar as the
geographical distribution of natural resources does not
limit the tendencies toward specialization and integra-
tion in the processing trades, the unhampered market
aims at the evolution of plants operating in a compara-
tively narrow field of specialized production but serv-
ing the whole population of the earth. From the point
of view of people who prefer more and better merchan-
dise to a smaller and poorer supply the ideal system
would consist in the highest possible concentration of
the production of each speciality. The same principle
that brought about the emergence of such specialists as
blacksmiths, carpenters, tailors, bakers and also physi-
cians, teachers, artists and writers would finally result
in the emergence of one factory supplying the whole
oecumene with some particular article. Although the
geographical factor mentioned above counteracts the
full operation of this tendency, international division of
labor came into existence and will move forward until

236 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

it reaches the limits drawn by geography, geology, and
climate.

Every step on the road toward intensification of the
division of labor hurts in the short run the personal in-
terests of some people. The expansion of the more effi-
cient plant hurts the interests of less efficient competitors
whom it forces to go out of business. Technological in-
novation hurts the interests of workers who can no
longer make a living by clinging to the discarded in-
ferior methods. The vested short-run interests of small
business and of inefficient workers are adversely affected
by any improvement. This is not a new phenomenon.
Neither is it a new phenomenon that those prejudiced
by economic improvement ask for privileges that will
protect them against the competition of the more effi-
cient. The history of mankind is a long record of obsta-
cles placed in the way of the more efficient for the ben-
efit of the less efficient.

It is customary to explain the obstinate efforts to stop
economic improvement by referring to the "interests."
The explanation is very unsatisfactory. Leaving aside
the fact that an innovation hurts merely the short-run
interests of some people, we must emphasize that it
hurts only the interests of a small minority while favor-
ing those of the immense majority. The bread factory
certainly hurts the small bakers. But it hurts them solely
because it improves the conditions of all people con-
suming bread. The importation of foreign sugar and
watches hurts the interests of a small minority of Amer-
icans. But it is a boon for all those who want to eat
sugar and to buy watches. The problem is precisely

HISTORICISM 237

this: Why is an innovation unpopular although it favors
the interests of the great majority of the people?

A privilege accorded to a special branch of business
is in the short run advantageous to those who at the
instant happen to be in this branch. But it hurts all
other people to the same extent. If everybody is priv-
ileged to the same degree, he loses as much in his ca-
pacity as a consumer as he wins in his capacity as a
producer. Moreover, everybody is hurt by the fact that
productivity in all branches of domestic production
drops on account of these privileges. 1 To the extent that
American legislation is successful in its endeavors to
curb big business, all are hurt because the products are
produced at higher costs in plants which would have
been wiped out in the absence of this policy. If the
United States had gone as far as Austria did in its fight
against big business, the average American would not
be much better off than the average Austrian.

It is not the interests that motivate the struggle
against the further intensification of the division of la-
bor, but spurious ideas about alleged interests. As in
any other regard, historicism in dealing with these prob-
lems too sees only the short-run disadvantages that re-
sult for some people and ignores the long-run advan-
tages for all of the people. It recommends measures
without mentioning the price that must be paid for
them. What fun shoemaking was in the days of Hans
Sachs and the Meistersinger! No need to analyze criti-
cally such romantic dreams. But how many people went
barefoot in those days? What a disgrace the big chemi-

1. See above, pp. 32 f.

238 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

cal concerns are! But would it have been possible for
pharmacists in their primitive laboratories to turn out
the drugs that kill the bacilli?

Those who want to set the clock of history back
ought to tell people what their policy would cost. Split-
ting up big business is all right if you are prepared to
put up with the consequences. If the present American
methods of taxing incomes and estates had been adopted
fifty years ago, most of those new things which no
American would like to do without today would not
have been developed at all or, if they had, would have
been inaccessible to the greater part of the nation. What
such authors as Professors Sombart and Tawney say
about the blissful conditions of the Middle Ages is mere
fantasy. The effort "to achieve a continuous and unlim-
ited increase in material wealth," says Professor Taw-
ney, brings "ruin to the soul and confusion to society." 2
No need to stress the fact that some people may feel
that a soul so sensitive it is ruined by the awareness
that more infants survive the first year of their lives and
fewer people die from starvation today than in the
Middle Ages is worth being ruined. What brings con-
fusion to society is not wealth but the efforts of histori-
cists such as Professor Tawney to discredit "economic
appetites." After all it was nature, not the capitalists,
that implanted appetites in man and impels him to sat-
isfy them. In the collectivist institutions of the Middle
Ages, such as church, township, village community, clan,
family, and guild, says Sombart, the individual "was kept

2. R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (New York,
Penguin Books, n.d.), pp. 38 and 234.

HISTORICISM 239

warm and sheltered like the fruit in its rind." s Is this
a faithful description of a time when the population
was harassed again and again by famines, plagues, wars,
the persecution of heretics, and other disasters?

It is certainly possible to stop the further progress of
capitalism or even to return to conditions in which small
business and more primitive methods of production pre-
vail. A police apparatus organized after the pattern of
the Soviet constabulary can achieve many things. The
question is only whether the nations that have built
modern civilization will be ready to pay the price.

3. W. Sombart, Der proletarische Sozialismus ( 10th ed. Jena,
1924), 1, 31.

Chapter 11. The Challenge of Scientism

1. Positivism and Behaviorism

What differentiates the realm of the natural sciences
from that of the sciences of human action is the cate-
gorial system resorted to in each in interpreting phe-
nomena and constructing theories. The natural sciences
do not know anything about final causes; inquiry and
theorizing are entirely guided by the category of
causality. The field of the sciences of human action is
the orbit of purpose and of conscious aiming at ends;
it is teleological.

Both categories were resorted to by primitive man
and are resorted to today by everybody in daily think-
ing and acting. The most simple skills and techniques
imply knowledge gathered by rudimentary research
into causality. Where people did not know how to seek
the relation of cause and effect, they looked for a tele-
ological interpretation. They invented deities and devils
to whose purposeful action certain phenomena were
ascribed. A god emitted lightning and thunder. An-
other god, angry about some acts of men, killed the
offenders by shooting arrows. A witch's evil eye made
women barren and cows dry. Such beliefs generated
definite methods of action. Conduct pleasing to the
deity, offering of sacrifices and prayer were considered
suitable means to appease the deity's anger and to

240

THE CHALLENGE OF SCIENTISM 241

avert its revenge; magic rites were employed to neu-
tralize witchcraft. Slowly people came to learn that
meteorological events, disease, and the spread of
plagues are natural phenomena and that lightning rods
and antiseptic agents provide effective protection while
magic rites are useless. It was only in the modern era
that the natural sciences in all their fields substituted
causal research for finalism.

The marvelous achievements of the experimental nat-
ural sciences prompted the emergence of a materialistic
metaphysical doctrine, positivism. Positivism flatly de-
nies that any field of inquiry is open for teleological
research. The experimental methods of the natural sci-
ences are the only appropriate methods for any kind of
investigation. They alone are scientific, while the tra-
ditional methods of the sciences of human action are
metaphysical, that is, in the terminology of positivism,
superstitious and spurious. Positivism teaches that the
task of science is exclusively the description and in-
terpretation of sensory experience. It rejects the intro-
spection of psychology as well as all historical disci-
plines. It is especially fanatical in its condemnation of
economics. Auguste Comte, by no means the founder
of positivism but merely the inventor of its name, sug-
gested as a substitute for the traditional methods of
dealing with human action a new branch of science,
sociology. Sociology should be social physics, shaped
according to the epistemological pattern of Newtonian
mechanics. The plan was so shallow and impractical
that no serious attempt was ever made to realize it. The
first generation of Comte's followers turned instead

242 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

toward what they believed to be biological and organic
interpretation of social phenomena. They indulged
freely in metaphorical language and quite seriously
discussed such problems as what in the social "body"
should be classed as "intercellular substance." When the
absurdity of this biologism and organicism became ob-
vious, the sociologists completely abandoned the am-
bitious pretensions of Comte. There was no longer any
question of discovering a posteriori laws of social
change. Various historical, ethnographical, and psycho-
logical studies were put out under the label sociology.
Many of these publications were dilettantish and con-
fused; some are acceptable contributions to various
fields of historical research. Without any value, on the
other hand, were the writings of those who termed
sociology their arbitrary metaphysical effusions about
the recondite meaning and end of the historical process
which had been previously styled philosophy of his-
tory. Thus, fimile Durkheim and his school revived
under the appellation group mind the old specter of
romanticism and the German school of historical juris-
prudence, the Volksgeist.

In spite of this manifest failure of the positivist pro-
gram, a neopositivist movement has arisen. It stub-
bornly repeats all the fallacies of Comte. The same
motive inspires these writers that inspired Comte. They
are driven by an idiosyncratic abhorrence of the market
economy and its political coroDary: representative gov-
ernment, freedom of thought, speech, and the press.
They long for totalitarianism, dictatorship, and the
ruthless oppression of all dissenters, taking, of course,

THE CHALLENGE OF SCIENTISM 243

for granted that they themselves or their intimate
friends will be vested with the supreme office and the
power to silence all opponents. Comte without shame
advocated suppression of all doctrines he disliked. The
most obtrusive champion of the neopositivist program
concerning the sciences of human action was Otto Neu-
rath who, in 1919, was one of the outstanding leaders of
the short-lived Soviet regime of Munich and later co-
operated briefly in Moscow with the bureaucracy of
the Bolsheviks. 1 Knowing they cannot advance any
tenable argument against the economists' critique of
their plans, these passionate communists try to discredit
economics wholesale on epistemological grounds.

The two main varieties of the neopositivistic assault
on economics are panphysicalism and behaviorism.
Both claim to substitute a purely causal treatment of
human action for the — as they declare unscientific —
teleological treatment.

Panphysicalism teaches that the procedures of phys-
ics are the only scientific method of all branches of
science. It denies that any essential differences exist
between the natural sciences and the sciences of human
action. This denial lies behind the panphysicalists' slo-
gan "unified science." Sense experience, which conveys
to man his information about physical events, provides
him also with all information about the behavior of his
fellow men. Study of the way his fellows react to var-
ious stimuli does not differ essentially from study of the
way other objects react. The language of physics is the

1. Otto Neurath, "Foundations of the Social Sciences," Interna-
tional Encyclopedia of Unified Science, Vol. 2, No. 1.

244 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

universal language of all branches of knowledge, with-
out exception. What cannot be rendered in the lan-
guage of physics is metaphysical nonsense. It is arro-
gant pretension in man to believe that his role in the
universe is different from that of other objects. In the
eyes of the scientist all things are equal. All talk about
consciousness, volition, and aiming at ends is empty.
Man is just one of the elements in the universe. The
applied science of social physics, social engineering,
can deal with man in the same way technology deals
with copper and hydrogen.

The panphysicalist might admit at least one essential
difference between man and the objects of physics. The
stones and the atoms reflect neither upon their own
nature, properties, and behavior nor upon those of man.
They do not engineer either themselves or man. Man is
at least different from them insofar as he is a physicist
and an engineer. It is difficult to conceive how one
could deal with the activities of an engineer without
realizing that he chooses between various possible lines
of conduct and is intent upon attaining definite ends.
Why does he build a bridge rather than a ferry? Why
does he build one bridge with a capacity of ten tons
and another with a capacity of twenty tons? Why is he
intent upon constructing bridges that do not collapse?
Or is it only an accident that most bridges do not col-
lapse? If one eliminates from the treatment of human
action the notion of conscious aiming at definite ends,
one must replace it by the — really metaphysical — idea
that some superhuman agency leads men, independ-
ently of their will, toward a predestined goal: that what

THE CHALLENGE OF SCIENTISM 245

put the bridge-builder into motion was the preordained
plan of Geist or the material productive forces which
mortal men are forced to execute.

To say that man reacts to stimuli and adjusts himself
to the conditions of his environment does not provide
a satisfactoiy answer. To the stimulus offered by the
English Channel some people have reacted by staying
at home; others have crossed it in rowboats, sailing
ships, steamers, or, in modern times simply by swim-
ming. Some fly over it in planes; others design schemes
for tunneling under it. It is vain to ascribe the differ-
ences in reaction to differences in attendant circum-
stances such as the state of technological knowledge
and the supply of labor and capital goods. These other
conditions too are of human origin and can only be
explained by resorting to teleological methods.

The approach of behaviorism is in some respects dif-
ferent from that of panphysicalism, but it resembles the
latter in its hopeless attempt to deal with human action
without reference to consciousness and aiming at ends.
It bases its reasoning on the slogan "adjustment." Like
any other being, man adjusts himself to the conditions
of his environment. But behaviorism fails to explain
why different people adjust themselves to the same
conditions in different ways. Why do some people flee
violent aggression while others resist it? Why did the
peoples of Western Europe adjust themselves to the
scarcity of all things on which human well-being de-
pends in a way entirely different from that of the
Orientals?

Behaviorism proposes to study human behavior ac-

246 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

cording to the methods developed by animal and infant
psychology. It seeks to investigate reflexes and instincts,
automatisms and unconscious reactions. But it has told
us nothing about the reflexes that have built cathedrals,
railroads, and fortresses, the instincts that have pro-
duced philosophies, poems, and legal systems, the au-
tomatisms that have resulted in the growth and decline
of empires, the unconscious reactions that are splitting
atoms. Behaviorism wants to observe human behavior
from without and to deal with it merely as reaction to
a definite situation. It punctiliously avoids any refer-
ence to meaning and purpose. However, a situation can-
not be described without analyzing the meaning which
the man concerned finds in it. If one avoids dealing
with this meaning, one neglects the essential factor that
decisively determines the mode of reaction. This re-
action is not automatic but depends entirely upon the
interpretation and value judgments of the individual,
who aims to bring about, if feasible, a situation which
he prefers to the state of affairs that would prevail if he
were not to interfere. Consider a behaviorist describing
the situation which an offer to sell brings about without
reference to the meaning each party attaches to it!

In fact, behaviorism would outlaw the study of hu-
man action and substitute physiology for it. The be-
haviorists never succeeded in making clear the differ-
ence between physiology and behaviorism. Watson
declared that physiology is "particularly interested in
the functioning of parts of the animal . . . , behavior-
ism, on the other hand, while it is intensely interested
in all of the functioning of these parts, is intrinsically

THE CHALLENGE OF SCIENTISM 247

interested in what the whole animal will do." 2 How-
ever, such physiological phenomena as the resistance
of the body to infection or the growth and aging of an
individual can certainly not be called behavior of parts.
On the other hand, if one wants to call such a gesture
as the movement of an arm (either to strike or to ca-
ress ) behavior of the whole human animal, the idea can
only be that such a gesture cannot be imputed to any
separate part of the being. But what else can this some-
thing to which it must be imputed be if not the meaning
and the intention of the actor or that unnamed thing
from which meaning and intention originate? Behavior-
ism asserts that it wants to predict human behavior.
But it is impossible to predict the reaction of a man ac-
costed by another with the words "you rat" without
referring to the meaning that the man spoken to at-
taches to the epithet.

Both varieties of positivism decline to recognize the
fact that men aim purposefully at definite ends. As they
see it, all events must be interpreted in the relationship
of stimulus and response, and there is no room left for
a search for final causes. Against this rigid dogmatism
it is necessary to stress the point that the rejection of
finalism in dealing with events outside the sphere of
human action is enjoined upon science only by the in-
sufficiency of human reason. The natural sciences must
refrain from dealing with final causes because they are
unable to discover any final causes, not because they
can prove that no final causes are operative. The cogni-

2. John B. Watson, Behaviorism (New York, W. W. Norton, 1930),
p. 11.

248 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

zance of the interconnectedness of all phenomena and
of the regularity in their concatenation and sequence,
and the fact that causality research works and has en-
larged human knowledge, do not peremptorily preclude
the assumption that final causes are operative in the
universe. The reason for the natural sciences' neglect
of final causes and their exclusive preoccupation with
causality research is that this method works. The con-
trivances designed according to the scientific theories
run the way the theories predicted and thus provide a
pragmatic verification for their correctness. On the
other hand the magic devices did not come up to expec-
tations and do not bear witness to the magic world
view.

It is obvious that it is also impossible to demonstrate
satisfactorily by ratiocination that the alter ego is a
being that aims purposively at ends. But the same
pragmatic proof that can be advanced in favor of the
exclusive use of causal research in the field of nature
can be advanced in favor of the exclusive use of teleo-
logical methods in the field of human action. It works,
while the idea of dealing with men as if they were
stones or mice does not work. It works not only in the
search for knowledge and theories but no less in daily
practice.

The positivist arrives at his point of view surrepti-
tiously. He denies to his fellow men the faculty of
choosing ends and the means to attain these ends, but
at the same time he claims for himself the ability to
choose consciously between various methods of scien-
tific procedure. He shifts his ground as soon as it comes

THE CHALLENGE OF SCIENTISM 249

to problems of engineering, whether technological or
"social." He designs plans and policies which cannot be
interpreted as merely being automatic reactions to stim-
uli. He wants to deprive all his fellows of the right to
act in order to reserve this privilege for himself alone.
He is a virtual dictator.

As the behaviorist tells us, man can be thought of as
"an assembled organic machine ready to run." 3 He dis-
regards the fact that while machines run the way the
engineer and the operator make them run, men run
spontaneously here and there. "At birth human infants,
regardless of their heredity, are as equal as Fords." 4
Starting from this manifest falsehood, the behaviorist
proposes to operate the "human Ford" the way the
operator drives his car. He acts as if he owned human-
ity and were called upon to control and to shape it ac-
cording to his own designs. For he himself is above the
law, the godsent ruler of mankind. 5

3. Watson, p. 269.

4. Horace M. Kallen, "Behaviorism," Encyclopaedia of the Social
Sciences, 2, 498.

5. Karl Mannheim developed a comprehensive plan to pro-
duce the "best possible" human types by "deliberately" reorganizing
the various groups of social factors. "We," that is Karl Mannheim and
his friends, will determine what "the highest good of society and the
peace of mind of the individual" require. Then "we" will revamp
mankind. For our vocation is "the planned guidance of people's lives."
Mannheim, Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction (London,
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1940), p. 222. The most remarkable thing
about such ideas is that in the thirties and forties they were styled
democratic, liberal, and progressive. Joseph Goebbels was more mod-
est than Mannheim in that he wanted only to revamp the German
people and not the whole of mankind. But in his approach to the
problem he did not differ essentially from Mannheim. In a letter of
April 12, 1933, to Wilhelm Furtwangler he referred to the "we" to

250 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

As long as positivism does not explain philosophies
and theories, and the plans and policies derived from
them, in terms of its stimulus-response scheme, it de-
feats itself.

2. The Collectivist Dogma

Modern collectivist philosophy is a coarse offshoot
of the old doctrine of conceptual realism. It has severed
itself from the general philosophical antagonism be-
tween realism and nominalism and hardly pays any
attention to the continued conflict of the two schools.
It is a political doctrine and as such employs a ter-
minology that is seemingly different from that used in
the scholastic debates concerning universals as well
from that of contemporary neorealism. But the nucleus
of its teachings does not differ from that of the medieval
realists. It ascribes to the universals objective real exist-
ence, even an existence superior to that of individuals,
sometimes, even, flatly denying the autonomous exist-
ence of individuals, the only real existence.

What distinguishes collectivism from conceptual real-
ism as taught by philosophers is not the method of ap-
proach but the political tendencies implied. Collectiv-
ism transforms the epistemological doctrine into an

whom "the responsible task has been entrusted, to fashion out of the
raw stuff of the masses the firm and well-shaped structure of the
nation (denen die verantwortungsvolle Aufgabe anvertraut ist, aus
dem rohen Stoff der Masse das feste und gestalthafte Gebilde des
VoDces zu formen)." Berta Geissmar, Musik im Schatten der Politik
(Zurich, Adantis Verlag, 1945), pp. 97-9. Unfortunately neither
Mannheim nor Goebbels told us who had entrusted them with the task
of reconstructing and re-creating men.

THE CHALLENGE OF SCIENTISM 251

ethical claim. It tells people what they ought to do. It
distinguishes between the true collective entity to
which people owe loyalty and spurious pseudo entities
about which they ought not to bother at all. There is no
uniform collectivist ideology, but many collectivist doc-
trines. Each of them extols a different collectivist entity
and requests all decent people to submit to it. Each
sect worships its own idol and is intolerant of all rival
idols. Each ordains total subjection of the individual,
each is totalitarian.

The particularist character of the various collectivist
doctrines could easily be ignored because they regu-
larly start with the opposition between society in gen-
eral and individuals. In this antithesis there appears
only one collective comprehending all individuals.
There cannot therefore arise any rivalry among a mul-
titude of collective entities. But in the further course
of the analysis a special collective is imperceptibly sub-
stituted for the comprehensive image of the unique
great society.

Let us first examine the concept of society in general.

Men cooperate with one another. The totality of
interhuman relations engendered by such cooperation
is called society. Society is not an entity in itself. It is
an aspect of human action. It does not exist or live out-
side of the conduct of people. It is an orientation of hu-
man action. Society neither thinks nor acts. Individuals
in thinking and acting constitute a complex of relations
and facts that are called social relations and facts.

The issue has been confused by an arithmetical meta-
phor. Is society, people asked, merely a sum of individ-

252 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

uals or is it more than this and thereby an entity en-
dowed with independent reality? The question is non-
sensical. Society is neither the sum of individuals nor
more nor less. Arithmetical concepts cannot be applied
to the matter.

Another confusion arises from the no less empty ques-
tion whether society is — in logic and in time — anterior
to individuals or not. The evolution of society and that
of civilization were not two distinct processes but one
and the same process. The biological passing of a spe-
cies of primates beyond the level of a mere animal
existence and their transformation into primitive men
implied already the development of the first rudiments
of social cooperation. Homo sapiens appeared on the
stage of earthly events neither as a solitary food-seeker
nor as a member of a gregarious flock, but as a being
consciously cooperating with other beings of his own
kind. Only in cooperation with his fellows could he de-
velop language, the indispensable tool of thinking. We
cannot even imagine a reasonable being living in per-
fect isolation and not cooperating at least with members
of his family, clan, or tribe. Man as man is necessarily a
social animal. Some sort of cooperation is an essential
characteristic of his nature. But awareness of this fact
does not justify dealing with social relations as if they
were something else than relations or with society as
if it were an independent entity outside or above the
actions of individual men.

Finally there are the misconstructions caused by the
organismic metaphor. We may compare society to a bi-
ological organism. The tertium comparationis is the fact

THE CHALLENGE OF SCIENTISM 253

that division of labor and cooperation exist among the
various parts of a biological body as among the various
members of society. But the biological evolution that
resulted in the emergence of the structure-function
systems of plant and animal bodies was a purely physio-
logical process in which no trace of a conscious activity
on the part of the cells can be discovered. On the other
hand, human society is an intellectual and spiritual phe-
nomenon. In cooperating with their fellows, individuals
do not divest themselves of their individuality. They
retain the power to act antisocially, and often make use
of it. Its place in the structure of the body is invariably
assigned to each cell. But individuals spontaneously
choose the way in which they integrate themselves into
social cooperation. Men have ideas and seek chosen
ends, while the cells and organs of the body lack such
autonomy.

Gestalt psychology passionately rejects the psycho-
logical doctrine of associationism. It ridicules the con-
ception of "a sensory mosaic which nobody has ever
observed" and teaches that "analysis if it wants to re-
veal the universe in its completeness has to stop at the
wholes, whatever their size, which possess functional
reality." * Whatever one may think about Gestalt psy-
chology, it is obvious that it has no reference at all to
the problems of society. It is manifest that nobody has
ever observed society as a whole. What can be observed
is always actions of individuals. In interpreting the var-
ious aspects of the individual's actions, the theorists

1. K. Koffka, "Gestalt," Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, 6,
644.

254 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

develop the concept of society. There cannot be any
question of understanding "the properties of parts from
the properties of wholes." 2 There are no properties of
society that cannot be discovered in the conduct of its
members.

In contrasting society and the individual and in deny-
ing to the latter any "true" reality, the collectivist doc-
trines look upon the individual merely as a refractory
rebel. This sinful wretch has the impudence to give
preference to his petty selfish interests as against the
sublime interests of the great god society. Of course,
the collectivist ascribes this eminence only to the right-
ful social idol, not to one of the pretenders.

But who pretender is, and who is king,
God bless us all — that's quite another thing.

When the collectivist extols the state, what he means
is not every state but only that regime of which he ap-
proves, no matter whether this legitimate state exists
already or has to be created. For the Czech irredentists
in the old Austria and the Irish irredentists in the
United Kingdom the states whose governments resided
in Vienna and in London were usurpers; their rightful
state did not yet exist. Especially remarkable is the
terminology of the Marxians. Marx was bitterly hostile
to the Prussian state of the Hohenzollern. To make it
clear that the state which he wanted to see omnipotent
and totalitarian was not that state whose rulers resided
in Berlin, he called the future state of his program not
state but society. The innovation was merely verbal.

2. Ibid., p. 645.

THE CHALLENGE OF SCIENTISM 255

For what Marx aimed at was to abolish any sphere of
the individual's initiative action by transferring the con-
trol of all economic activities to the social apparatus of
compulsion and repression which is commonly called
state or government. The hoax did not fail to beguile
lots of people. Even today there are still dupes who
think that there is a difference between state socialism
and other types of socialism.

The confusion of the concepts of society and of state
originated with Hegel and Schelling. It is customary to
distinguish two schools of Hegelians: the left wing and
the right wing. The distinction refers only to the atti-
tude of these authors toward the Kingdom of Prussia
and the doctrines of the Prussian Union Church. The
political creed of both wings was essentially the same.
Both advocated government omnipotence. It was a left-
wing Hegelian, Ferdinand Lassalle, who most clearly
expressed the fundamental thesis of Hegelianism: "The
State is God." 3 Hegel himself had been a little more
cautious. He only declared that it is "the course of
God through the world that constitutes the State" and
that in dealing with the State one must contemplate
"the Idea, God as actual on earth." 4

The collectivist philosophers fail to realize that what
constitutes the state is the actions of individuals. The
legislators, those enforcing the laws by force of arms,
and those yielding to the dictates of the laws and the
police constitute the state by their behavior. In this

3. Gustav Mayer, Lassalleana, Archiv fur Geschichte der Sozialis-
mus, 1, 196.

4. Hegel, Philosophy of Bight, sec. 258.

256 EPISTEMOLOCICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

sense alone is the state real. There is no state apart from
such actions of individual men.

3. The Concept of the Social Sciences

The collectivist philosophy denies that there are such
things as individuals and actions of individuals. The
individual is merely a phantom without reality, an il-
lusory image invented by the pseudo philosophy of the
apologists of capitalism. Consequently collectivism re-
jects the concept of a science of human action. As it
sees it, the only legitimate treatment of those problems
that are not dealt with by the traditional natural sci-
ences is provided by what they call the social sciences.

The social sciences are supposed to deal with group
activities. In their context the individual counts only
as a member of a group. 1 But this definition implies
that there are actions in which the individual does not
act as a member of a group and which therefore do not
interest the social sciences. If this is so, it is obvious
that the social sciences deal only with an arbitrarily
selected fraction of the whole field of human action.

In acting, man must necessarily choose between var-
ious possible modes of acting. Limiting their analysis
to one class of actions only, the social sciences renounce
in advance any attempt to investigate the ideas that de-
termine the individual's choice of a definite mode of
conduct. They cannot deal with judgments of value
which in any actual situation make a man prefer act-

1. E. R. A. Seligman, '"What Are the Social Sciences?" Encyclo-
paedia of the Social Sciences, 1, 3.

THE CHALLENGE OF SCIENTISM 257

ing as a group member to acting in a different manner.
Neither can they deal with the judgments of value that
prompt a man to act as a member of group A rather
than as a member of any of the non-A groups.

Man is not the member of one group only and does
not appear on the scene of human affairs solely in the
role of a member of one definite group. In speaking of
social groups it must be remembered that the members
of one group are at the same time members of other
groups. The conflict of groups is not a conflict between
neatly integrated herds of men. It is a conflict between
various concerns in the minds of individuals.

What constitutes group membership is the way a
man acts in a concrete situation. Hence group member-
ship is not something rigid and unchangeable. It may
change from case to case. The same man may in the
course of a single day perform actions each of which
qualifies him as a member of a different group. He may
contribute to the funds of his denomination and cast his
ballot for a candidate who antagonizes that denomina-
tion in essential problems. He may act at one instant
as a member of a labor union, at another as a member
of a religious community, at another as a member of a
political party, at another as a member of a linguistic or
racial group, and so on. Or he may act as an individual
working to earn more income, to get his son into col-
lege, to purchase a home, a car, or a refrigerator. In fact
he always acts as an individual, always seeks ends of
his own. In joining a group and acting as a member
of it, he aims no less at the fulfillment of his own wishes
than in acting without any reference to a group. He

258 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

may join a religious community in order to seek the sal-
vation of his soul or to attain peace of mind. He may
join a labor union because he believes that this is the
best means to get higher pay or to avoid being bodily
injured by the members of the union. He may join a
political party because he expects that the realization
of its program will render conditions more satisfactory
for himself and his family.

It is vain to deal with "the activities of the individual
as a member of a group" 2 while omitting other activ-
ities of the individual. Group activities are essentially
and necessarily activities of individuals who form
groups in order to attain their ends. There are no social
phenomena which would not originate from the activ-
ities of various individuals. What creates a group ac-
tivity is a definite end sought by individuals and the
belief of these individuals that cooperating in this
group is a suitable means to attain the end sought. A
group is a product of human wishes and the ideas about
the means to realize these wishes. Its roots are in the
value judgments of individuals and in the opinions held
by individuals about the effects to be expected from
definite means.

To deal with social groups adequately and com-
pletely, one must start from the actions of the individ-
uals. No group activity can be understood without
analyzing the ideology that forms the group and makes
it live and work. The idea of dealing with group activ-
ities without dealing with all aspects of human action
is preposterous. There is no field distinct from the field

2. Seligman, loc. tit.

THE CHALLENGE OF SCIENTISM 259

of the sciences of human action that could be investi-
gated by something called the social sciences.

What prompted those who suggested the substitu-
tion of the social sciences for the sciences of human ac-
tion was, of course, a definite political program. In
their eyes the social sciences were designed to oblit-
erate the social philosophy of individualism. The cham-
pions of the social sciences invented and popularized
the terminology that characterizes the market economy,
in which every individual is intent upon the realiza-
tion of his own plan, as a planless and therefore chaotic
system and reserves the term "plan" for the designs of
an agency which, supported by or identical with the
government's police power, prevents all citizens from
realizing their own plans and designs. One can hardly
overrate the role which the association of ideas gen-
erated by this terminology plays in shaping the politi-
cal tenets of our contemporaries.

4. The Nature of Mass Phenomena

Some people believe that the object of the social
sciences is the study of mass phenomena. While the
study of individual traits is of no special interest to
them, they hope study of the behavior of social aggre-
gates will reveal information of a really scientific char-
acter. For these people the chief defect of the tradi-
tional methods of historical research is that they deal
with individuals. They esteem statistics precisely be-
cause, as they think, it observes and records the be-
havior of social groups.

260 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

In fact statistics records individual traits of the mem-
bers of arbitrarily selected groups. Whatever the prin-
ciple may be that determined the scientist to set up a
group, the traits recorded refer primarily to the individ-
uals that form the group and only indirectly to the
group. The individual members of the group are the
units of observation. What statistics provides is infor-
mation about the behavior of individuals forming a
group.

Modern statistics aims at discovering invariable con-
nections between statistically established magnitudes
by measuring their correlation. In the field of the sci-
ences of human action this method is absurd. This has
been clearly demonstrated by the fact that many coeffi-
cients of correlation of a high numerical value have
been calculated which undoubtedly do not indicate any
connection between the two groups of facts. 1

Social phenomena and mass phenomena are not
things outside and above individual phenomena. They
are not the cause of individual phenomena. They are
produced either by the cooperation of individuals or
by parallel action. The latter may be either independent
or imitative. This is valid also with regard to antisocial
actions. The intentional killing of a man by another
man is as such merely a human action and would have
no other significance in a hypothetical (and irrealiza-
ble) state in which there was no cooperation between
men. It becomes a crime, murder, in a state where social

1. M. R. Cohen and E. Nagel, An Introduction to Logic and Scien-
tific Method (New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1934), p. 317.

THE CHALLENGE OF SCIENTISM 261

cooperation precludes homicide except in cases strictly
determined by the laws of this society.

What is commonly called a mass phenomenon is the
frequent repetition and recurrence of a definite individ-
ual phenomenon. The proposition: In the West bread
is an article of mass consumption, means: In the West
the immense majority of men eat bread daily. They do
not eat bread because it is an article of mass consump-
tion. Bread is an article of mass consumption because
practically everybody eats a piece of bread each day.
From this point of view one may appreciate the endeav-
ors of Gabriel Tarde to describe imitation and repeti-
tion as fundamental factors of social evolution. 2

The champions of the social sciences criticize the his-
torians for concentrating their attention upon the ac-
tions of individuals and neglecting the conduct of the
many, the immense majority, the masses. The critique is
spurious. A historian who deals with the spread of the
Christian creed and of the various churches and denom-
inations, with the events that resulted in the emergence
of integrated linguistic groups, with the European colo-
nization of the Western hemisphere, with the rise of
modern capitalism certainly does not overlook the be-
havior of the many. However, the main task of history
is to indicate the relation of the individuals' actions to
the course of affairs. Different individuals influence his-
torical change in different ways. There are pioneers who
conceive new ideas and design new modes of thinking
and acting; there are leaders who guide people along

2. C. Tarde, Les lois de I'imttation, 3d ed. Paris, 1900.

262 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

the way these people want to walk, and there are the
anonymous masses who follow the leaders. There can
be no question of writing history without the names of
the pioneers and the leaders. The history of Christian-
ity cannot pass over in silence such men as Saint Paul,
Luther, and Calvin, nor can the history of seventeenth-
century England fail to analyze the roles of Cromwell,
Milton, and William III. To ascribe the ideas producing
historical change to the mass psyche is a manifestation
of arbitrary metaphysical prepossession. The intellec-
tual innovations which August Comte and Buckle
rightly considered the main theme of the study of his-
tory are not achievements of the masses. Mass move-
ments are not inaugurated by anonymous nobodys but
by individuals. We do not know the names of the men
who in the early days of civilization accomplished the
greatest exploits. But we are certain that also the tech-
nological and institutional innovations of those early
ages were not the result of a sudden flash of inspiration
that struck the masses but the work of some individuals
who by far surpassed their fellow men.

There is no mass psyche and no mass mind but only
ideas held and actions performed by the many in en-
dorsing the opinions of the pioneers and leaders and
imitating their conduct. Mobs and crowds too act only
under the direction of ringleaders. The common men
who constitute the masses are characterized by lack of
initiative. They are not passive, they also act, but they
act only at the instigation of abetters.

The emphasis laid by sociologists upon mass phe-
nomena and their idolization of the common man are

THE CHALLENGE OF SCIENTISM 263

an offshoot of the myth that all men are biologically
equal. Whatever differences exist between individuals
are caused, it is maintained, by postnatal circumstances.
If all people equally enjoyed the benefits of a good edu-
cation, such differences would never appear. The sup-
porters of this doctrine are at a loss to explain the dif-
ferences among graduates of the same school and the
fact that many who are self-taught far excel the doctors,
masters, and bachelors of the most renowned univer-
sities. They fail to see that education cannot convey to
pupils more than the knowledge of their teachers. Edu-
cation rears disciples, imitators, and routinists, not pio-
neers of new ideas and creative geniuses. The schools
are not nurseries of progress and improvement but
conservatories of tradition and unvarying modes of
thought. The mark of the creative mind is that it defies
a part of what it has learned or, at least, adds something
new to it. One utterly misconstrues the feats of the
pioneer in reducing them to the instruction he got from
his teachers. No matter how efficient school training
may be, it would only produce stagnation, orthodoxy,
and rigid pedantry if there were no uncommon men
pushing forward beyond the wisdom of their tutors.

It is hardly possible to mistake more thoroughly the
meaning of history and the evolution of civilization
than by concentrating one's attention upon mass phe-
nomena and neglecting individual men and their ex-
ploits. No mass phenomenon can be adequately treated
without analyzing the ideas implied. And no new ideas
spring from the mythical mind of the masses.

Chapter 12. Psychology and Thymology

1. Naturalistic Psychology and Thymology

Many authors believe that psychology is basic to the
social sciences, even that it comprehends them all.

Insofar as psychology proceeds with the experimental
methods of physiology, these claims are manifestly un-
warranted. The problems investigated in the laborato-
ries of the various schools of experimental psychology
have no more reference to the problems of the sciences
of human action than those of any other scientific dis-
cipline. Most of them are even of no use to praxeology,
economics, and all the branches of history. In fact, no-
body ever tried to show how the findings of naturalistic
psychology could be utilized for any of these sciences.

But the term "psychology" is applied in another sense
too. It signifies the cognition of human emotions, moti-
vations, ideas, judgments of value and volitions, a fac-
ulty indispensable to everybody in the conduct of daily
affairs and no less indispensable to the authors of po-
ems, novels, and plays as well as to historians. Modern
epistemology calls this mental process of the historians
the specific understanding of the historical sciences of
human action. Its function is twofold: it establishes,
on the one hand, the fact that, motivated by definite
value judgments, people have engaged in definite ac-
tions and applied definite means to attain the ends they

264

PSYCHOLOGY AND THYMOLOGY 265

seek. It tries, on the other hand, to evaluate the effects
and the intensity of the effects of an action, its bearing
upon the further course of events.

The specific understanding of the historical disci-
plines is not a mental process exclusively resorted to
by historians. It is applied by everybody in daily inter-
course with all his fellows. It is a technique employed
in all interhuman relations. It is practiced by children
in the nursery and kindergarten, by businessmen in
trade, by politicians and statesmen in affairs of state.
All are eager to get information about other people's
valuations and plans and to appraise them correctly.
People as a rule call this insight into the minds of other
men psychology. Thus, they say a salesman ought to
be a good psychologist, and a political leader should be
an expert in mass psychology. This popular use of the
term "psychology" must not be confused with the psy-
chology of any of the naturalistic schools. When Dilthey
and other epistemologists declared that history must be
based on psychology, what they had in mind was this
mundane or common-sense meaning of the term.

To prevent mistakes resulting from the confusion of
these two entirely different branches of knowledge it
is expedient to reserve the term "psychology" for natu-
ralistic psychology and to call the knowledge of human
valuations and volitions "thymology." *

1. Some writers, for instance, Santayana, employed the term "lit-
erary psychology." See his book Scepticism and Animal Faith, ch. 24.
However, the use of this term seems inadvisable, not only because it
was employed in a pejorative sense by Santayana as well as by many
representatives of naturalistic psychology, but because it is impossible
to form a corresponding adjective. "Thymology" is derived from the

266 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

Thymology is on the one hand an offshoot of intro-
spection and on the other a precipitate of historical ex-
perience. It is what everybody learns from intercourse
with his fellows. It is what a man knows about the way
in which people value different conditions, about their
wishes and desires and their plans to realize these
wishes and desires. It is the knowledge of the social
environment in which a man lives and acts or, with
historians, of a foreign milieu about which he has
learned by studying special sources. If an epistemolo-
gist states that history has to be based on such knowl-
edge as thymology, he simply expresses a truism.

While naturalistic psychology does not deal at all
with the content of human thoughts, judgments, de-
sires, and actions, the field of thymology is precisely
the study of these phenomena.

The distinction between naturalistic psychology and
physiology on the one hand and thymology on the
other hand can best be illustrated by referring to the
methods of psychiatry. Traditional psychopathology
and neuropathology deal with the physiological aspects
of the diseases of the nerves and the brain. Psychoa-

Greek ivrft, which Homer and other authors refer to as the seat of
the emotions and as the mental faculty of the living body by means of
which thinking, willing, and feeling are conducted. See Wilhelm von
Volkmann, Lehrbuch der Psychologie (Cothen, 1884), 1, 57-9; Erwin
Rohde, Psyche, trans, by W. B. Hillis (London, 1925), p. 50; Richard
B. Onians, The Origins of European Thought about the Body, the
Mind, the Soul, the World, Time, and Fate (Cambridge, 1951), pp.
49-56. Recently Professor Hermann Friedmann employed the term
Thymologie with a somewhat different connotation. See his book Das
Gemiit, Gedanken zu einer Thymologie (Munich, C. H. Beck, 1956),
pp. 2-16.

PSYCHOLOGY AND THYMOLOGY 267

nalysis deals with their thymological aspects. The object
of its investigations is ideas and the conscious aiming
at ends that come into conflict with physiological im-
pulses. Ideas urge individuals to suppress certain
natural drives, especially such as the sex impulse. But
the attempts to repress them do not always succeed
fully. The impulses are not eradicated, merely relegated
to a hiding place, and take their vengeance. From the
depth they exert a disturbing influence on the con-
scious life and conduct of the individual. Psychoan-
alytic therapy tries to remove these neurotic troubles
by bringing the conflict into the full consciousness of
the patient. It heals with ideas, not with drugs or surgi-
cal operations.

It is customary to assert that psychoanalysis deals
with irrational factors influencing human conduct. This
statement needs interpretation in order to prevent con-
fusion. All ultimate ends aimed at by men are beyond
the criticism of reason. Judgments of value can be
neither justified nor refuted by reasoning. The terms
"reasoning" and "rationality" always refer only to the
suitability of means chosen for attaining ultimate ends.
The choice of ultimate ends is in this sense always ir-
rational.

The sex impulse and the urge to preserve one's own
vital forces are inherent in the animal nature of man.
If man were only an animal and not also a valuing
person, he would always yield to the impulse that at
the instant is most powerful. The eminence of man con-
sists in the fact that he has ideas and, guided by them,
chooses between incompatible ends. He chooses also

268 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

between life and death, between eating and hunger,
between coition and sexual abstinence.

In earlier days people were prepared to assume that
there was no sense at all in the exceptional behavior
of neurotics. Freud demonstrated that the seemingly
senseless acts of the neurotic are designed to attain
definite ends. The ends the neurotic wants to attain
may differ from those for which normal people strive,
and — very often — the means the neurotic resorts to are
not suitable for their realization. But the fact that
means chosen are not fit to attain the ends sought does
not qualify an action as irrational.

To make mistakes in pursuing one's ends is a wide-
spread human weakness. Some err less often than
others, but no mortal man is omniscient and infal-
lible. Error, inefficiency, and failure must not be con-
fused with irrationality. He who shoots wants, as a rule,
to hit the mark. If he misses it, he is not "irrational"; he
is a poor marksman. The doctor who chooses the wrong
method to treat a patient is not irrational; he may be an
incompetent physician. The farmer who in earlier ages
tried to increase his crop by resorting to magic rites
acted no less rationally than the modern fanner who
applies more fertilizer. He did what according to his —
erroneous — opinion was appropriate to his purpose.

What characterizes the neurotic as such is not the
fact that he resorts to unsuitable means but that he fails
to come to grips with the conflicts that confront
civilized man. Life in society requires that the individ-
ual suppress instinctive urges present in every animal.
We may leave it undecided whether the impulse of

PSYCHOLOGY AND THYMOLOGY 269

aggression is one of these innate urges. There is no
doubt that life in society is incompatible with indul-
gence in the animal habits of satisfying sexual appetites.
Perhaps there are better methods of regulating sexual
intercourse than those resorted to in actual society.
However that may be, it is a fact that the adopted
methods put too much strain upon the minds of some
individuals. These men and women are at a loss to
solve problems which luckier people get over. Their
dilemma and embarrassment make them neurotic.

Many spurious objections have been raised to the
philosophy of rationalism. Various nineteenth-century
schools of thought completely misinterpreted the es-
sence of the rationalist doctrine. As against these mis-
interpretations it is important to realize that eighteenth-
century classical rationalism was defective only in the
treatment of some subordinate and merely incidental
issues and that these minor deficiencies could easily
lead undiscerning critics astray.

The fundamental thesis of rationalism is unassailable.
Man is a rational being; that is, his actions are guided
by reason. The proposition: Man acts, is tantamount to
the proposition: Man is eager to substitute a state of
affairs that suits him better for a state of affairs that
suits him less. In order to achieve this, he must employ
suitable means. It is his reason that enables him to find
out what is a suitable means for attaining his chosen end
and what is not.

Rationalism was right furthermore in stressing that
there is a far-reaching unanimity among people with
regard to the choice of ultimate ends. With almost neg-

270 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

ligible exceptions, all people want to preserve their lives
and health and improve the material conditions of
their existence. It is this fact that determines both co-
operation and competition among men. But in dealing
with this point rationalist philosophers committed se-
rious blunders.

In the first place they assumed that all men are en-
dowed with the same power of reasoning. They ignored
the difference between clever people and dullards, even
that between the pioneering genius and the vast crowds
of simple routinists who at best can espouse the doc-
trines developed by the great thinkers but more often
are incapable of comprehending them. As the ration-
alists saw it, every sane adult was intelligent enough
to grasp the meaning of the most complicated theory.
If he failed to achieve it, the fault lay not in his intel-
lect but in his education. Once all people have enjoyed
a perfect education, all will be as wise and judicious
as the most eminent sage.

The second shortcoming of rationalism was its neg-
lect of the problem of erroneous thinking. Most of the
rationalist philosophers failed to see that even honest
men, sincerely devoted to the search for truth, could
err. This prepossession prevented them from doing jus-
tice to the ideologies and the metaphysical doctrines of
the past. A doctrine of which they disapproved could
in their opinion have been prompted only by purpose-
ful deceit. Many of them dismissed all religions as the
product of the intentional fraud of wicked impostors.

Yet these shortcomings of classical rationalism do not

PSYCHOLOGY AND THYMOLOGY 271

excuse any of the passionate attacks of modern irra-
tionalism.

2. Thymology and Praxeology

Thymology has no special relation to praxeology and
economics. The popular belief that modern subjective
economics, the marginal utility school, is founded on
or closely connected with "psychology" is mistaken.

The very act of valuing is a thymological phenome-
non. But praxeology and economics do not deal with
the thymological aspects of valuation. Their theme is
acting in accordance with the choices made by the
actor. The concrete choice is an offshoot of valuing. But
praxeology is not concerned with the events which
within a man's soul or mind or brain produce a definite
decision between an A and a B. It takes it for granted
that the nature of the universe enjoins upon man choos-
ing between incompatible ends. Its subject is not the
content of these acts of choosing but what results from
them: action. It does not care about what a man chooses
but about the fact that he chooses and acts in compli-
ance with a choice made. It is neutral with regard to
the factors that determine the choice and does not arro-
gate to itself the competence to examine, to revise, or
to correct judgments of value. It is wertfrei.

Why one man chooses water and another man wine
is a thymological (or, in the traditional terminology,
psychological) problem. But it is of no concern to praxe-
ology and economics.

272 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

The subject matter of praxeology and of that part of
it which is so far the best developed — economics — is
action as such and not the motives that impel a man to
aim at definite ends.

3. Thymology as a Historical Discipline

Psychology in the sense in which the term is em-
ployed today by the discipline called psychology is a
natural science. It is not the task of an epistemological
treatise dealing with the sciences of human action to
raise the question as to what distinguishes this branch
of the natural sciences from general physiology.

Psychology in the sense of thymology is a branch of
history. It derives its knowledge from historical expe-
rience. We shall deal in a later section with introspec-
tion. At this point is suffices to stress the fact that the
thymological observation both of other people's choices
and of the observer's own choosing necessarily always
refers to the past, in the way that historical experience
does. There is no method available which would pro-
duce in this field something analogous to what the natu-
ral sciences consider an experimentally established fact.
All that thymology can tell us is that in the past definite
men or groups of men were valuing and acting in a defi-
nite way. Whether they will in the future value and act
in the same way remains uncertain. All that can be
asserted about their future conduct is speculative an-
ticipation of the future based on the specific under-
standing of the historical branches of the sciences of
human action.

PSYCHOLOGY AND THYMOLOGY 273

There is no difference in this regard between the
thymology of individuals and that of groups. What is
called Volkerpsychologie and mass psychology too are
historical disciplines. What is called a nation's "char-
acter" is at best the traits displayed by members of that
nation in the past. It remains uncertain whether or not
the same traits will manifest themselves in the future
too.

All animals are endowed with the impulse of self-
preservation. They resist forces detrimental to their sur-
vival. If attacked, they defend themselves or counter-
attack or seek safety in flight. Biology is in a position
to predict, on the basis of observation of the behavior
of various species of animals, how a healthy individual
of each species will respond to attack. No such apodictic
forecast concerning the conduct of men is possible.
True, the immense majority of men are driven by the
animal impulse of self-preservation. But there are ex-
ceptions. There are men who are led by definite ideas
to choose nonresistance. There are others whom hope-
lessness induces to abstain from any attempt to resist or
to flee. Before the event it is impossible to know with
certainty how an individual will react.

In retrospect historical analysis tries to show us that
the outcome could not have been different from what
it really was. Of course, the effect is always the neces-
sary resultant of the factors operating. But it is im-
possible to deduce with certainty from thymological
experience the future conduct of men, whether individ-
uals or groups of individuals. All prognostications based
on thymological knowledge are specific understanding

274 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

of the future as practiced daily by everyone in their
actions and especially also by statesmen, politicians,
and businessmen.

What thymology achieves is the elaboration of a cata-
logue of human traits. It can moreover establish the
fact that certain traits appeared in the past as a rule
in connection with certain other traits. But it can never
predict in the way the natural sciences can. It can never
know in advance with what weight the various factors
will be operative in a definite future event.

4. History and Fiction

History tries to describe past events as they really
happened. It aims at faithful representation. Its con-
cept of truth is correspondence with what was once
reality.

Epic and dramatic fiction depict what is to be con-
sidered true from the point of view of thymological in-
sight, no matter whether the story told really happened
or not. It is not our task to deal with the effects the
author wants to bring about by his work and with its
metaphysical, aesthetic, and moral content. Many
writers seek merely to entertain the public. Others are
more ambitious. In telling a story, they try to suggest a
general view of man's fate, of life and death, of human
effort and suffering, of success and frustration. Their
message differs radically from that of science as well as
from that of philosophy. Science, in describing and in-
terpreting the universe, relies entirely upon reason and
experience. It shuns propositions which are not open to

PSYCHOLOGY AND THYMOLOGY 275

demonstration by means of logic (in the broadest sense
of the term that includes mathematics and praxeology)
and experience. It analyzes parts of the universe with-
out making any statements about the totality of things.
Philosophy tries to build upon the foundations laid by
science a comprehensive world view. In striving after
this end, it feels itself bound not to contradict any of the
well-founded theses of contemporary science. Thus its
path too is confined by reason and experience.

Poets and artists approach things and problems in
another mood. In dealing with a single aspect of the
universe they are always dealing with the whole. Nar-
ration and description, the portrayal of individual
things and of particular events, is for them only a
means. The essential feature of their work is beyond
words, designs, and colors. It is in the ineffable feelings
and ideas that activated the creator and move the
reader and spectator. When Konrad Ferdinand Meyer
described a Roman fountain and Rainer Maria Rilke a
caged panther, they did not simply portray reality.
They caught a glimpse of the universe. In Flaubert's
novel it is not Madame Bovary's sad story that is of pri-
mary concern; it is something that reaches far beyond
the fate of this poor woman. There is a fundamental
difference between the most faithful photograph and
a portrait painted by an artist. What characterizes a
work of literature and art as such is not its reporting
of facts but the way it reveals an aspect of the uni-
verse and man's attitude toward it. What makes an
artist is not experience and knowledge as such. It is his
particular reaction to the problems of human existence

276 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

and fate. It is Erlehnis, a purely personal response to
the reality of his environment and his experience.

Poets and artists have a message to tell. But this
message refers to ineffable feelings and ideas. It is not
open to utterance in an unambiguous way precisely
because it is ineffable. We can never know whether
what we experience — erleben — in enjoying their work
is what they experienced in creating it. For their work
is not simply a communication. Apart from what it com-
municates, it stirs up in the reader and spectator feel-
ings and ideas which may differ from those of its au-
thor. It is a hopeless task to interpret a symphony, a
painting, or a novel. The interpreter at best tries to tell
us something about his reaction to the work. He cannot
tell us with certainty what the creator's meaning was
or what other people may see in it. Even if the creator
himself provides a commentary on his work, as in the
case of program-music, this uncertainty remains. There
are no words to describe the ineffable.

What history and fiction have in common is the fact
that both are based on knowledge concerning the hu-
man mind. They operate with thymological experience.
Their method of approach is the specific understanding
of human valuations, of the way people react to the
challenge of their natural and social environment. But
then their ways part. What the historian has to tell is
completely expressed in his report. He communicates to
the reader all he has established. His message is exo-
teric. There is nothing that would go beyond the con-
tent of his book as intelligible to competent readers.

PSYCHOLOGY AND THYMOLOGY 277

It may happen that the study of history, or for that
matter also the study of the natural sciences, rouses in
the mind of a man those ineffable thoughts and views
of the universe as a whole which are the mark of the
empathic grasp of totality. But this does not alter the
nature and character of the historian's work. History is
unconditionally the search after facts and events that
really happened.

Fiction is free to depict events that never occurred.
The writer creates, as people say, an imaginary story.
He is free to deviate from reality. The tests of truth that
apply to the work of the historian do not apply to his
work. Yet his freedom is limited. He is not free to defy
the teachings of thymological experience. It is not a
requirement of novels and plays that the things related
should really have happened. It is not even necessary
that they could happen at all; they may introduce
heathen idols, fairies, animals acting in human manner,
ghosts and other phantoms. But all the characters of a
novel or a play must act in a thymologically intelligible
way. The concepts of truth and falsehood as applied to
epic and dramatic works refer to thymological plausi-
bility. The author is free to create fictitious persons and
plots but he must not try to invent a thymology — psy-
chology — different from that derived from the observa-
tion of human conduct.

Fiction, like history, does not deal with average man
or man in the abstract or general man — homme general 1

1. P. Lacombe, De Vhistoire consuterSe comme science (2d ed.
Paris, 1930), pp. 35-41.

278 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

— but with individual men and individual events. Yet
even here there is a conspicuous difference between
history and fiction.

The individuals with whom history deals may be and
often are groups of individuals, and the individual
events with which it deals are events that affected such
groups of individuals. The single individual is a subject
of the historian's interest primarily from the point of
view of the influence his actions exercised upon a multi-
tude of people or as a typical specimen representative
of whole groups of individuals. The historian does not
bother about other people. But for the writer of fiction
it is always only the individual as such that counts, no
matter what his influence upon other people or whether
or not he is to be considered typical.

This has been entirely misunderstood in some doc-
trines about literature developed in the second part of
the nineteenth century. The authors of these doctrines
were misled by contemporary changes in the treatment
of history. While older historians wrote chiefly about
great men and affairs of state, modern historians shifted
to the history of ideas, institutions, and social condi-
tions. At a time when the prestige of science far sur-
passed that of literature, and positivist zealots sneered
at fiction as a useless pastime, writers tried to justify
their profession by representing it as a branch of scien-
tific research. In the opinion of fimile Zola the novel
was a sort of descriptive economics and social psychol-
ogy, to be based upon punctilious exploration of particu-
lar conditions and institutions. Other authors went even
further and asserted that only the fate of classes, na-

PSYCHOLOGY AND THYMOLOGY 279

tions, and races, not that of individuals, is to be treated
in novels and plays.They obliterated the distinction be-
tween a statistical report and a "social" novel or play.

The books and plays written in compliance with the
precepts of this naturalistic aesthetics were clumsy
pieces of work. No outstanding writer paid more than
lip service to these principles. Zola himself was very re-
strained in the application of his doctrine.

The theme of novels and plays is individual man as
he lives, feels, and acts, and not anonymous collective
wholes. The milieu is the background of the portraits
the author paints; it is the state of external affairs to
which the characters respond by moves and acts. There
is no such thing as a novel or play whose hero is an ab-
stract concept such as a race, a nation, a caste, or a
political party. Man alone is the perennial subject of
literature, individual real man as he lives and acts.

The theories of the aprioristic sciences — logic, mathe-
matics, and praxeology — and the experimental facts es-
tablished by the natural sciences can be viewed without
reference to the personality of their authors. In dealing
with the problems of Euclidian geometry we are not
concerned with the man Euclid and may forget that
he ever lived. The work of the historian is necessarily
colored by the historian's specific understanding of
the problems involved, but it is still possible to discuss
the various issues implied without referring to the his-
torical fact that they originated from a definite author.
No such objectivity is permitted in dealing with works
of fiction. A novel or a play always has one hero more
than the plot indicates. It is also a confession of the

280 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

author and tells no less about him than about the per-
sons in the story. It reveals his innermost soul.

It has sometimes been asserted that there is more
truth in fiction than in history. Insofar as the novel or
play is looked upon as a disclosure of the author's mind,
this is certainly correct. The poet always writes about
himself, always analyzes his own soul.

5. Rationalization

The thymological analysis of man is essential in the
study of history. It conveys all we can know about ulti-
mate ends and judgments of value. But as has been
pointed out above, it is of no avail for praxeology and
of little use in dealing with the means applied to attain
ends sought.

With regard to the choice of means all that matters
is their suitability to attain the ends sought. There is
no other standard for appraising means. There are suit-
able means and unsuitable means. From the point of
view of the actor the choice of unsuitable means is al-
ways erroneous, an inexcusable failure.

History is called upon to explain the origin of such
errors by resorting to thymology and the specific under-
standing. As man is fallible and the search after appro-
priate means is very difficult, the course of human his-
tory is by and large a series of errors and frustration.
Looking backward from the present state of our knowl-
edge we are sometimes tempted to belittle past ages
and boast of the efficiency of our time. However, even

PSYCHOLOGY AND THYMOLOGY 281

the pundits of the "atomic age" are not safe against er-
ror.

Shortcomings in the choice of means and in acting
are not always caused by erroneous thinking and inef-
ficiency. Frequently frustration is the result of irreso-
luteness with regard to the choice of ends. Wavering
between various incompatible goals, the actor vacil-
lates in his conduct of affairs. Indecision prevents him
from marching straight toward one goal. He moves to
and fro. He goes now toward the left, then toward the
right. Thus he does not accomplish anything. Political,
diplomatic, and military history has dealt amply with
this type of irresolute action in the conduct of affairs of
state. Freud has shown what role in the daily life of
the individual subconscious repressed urges play in for-
getting, mistakes, slips of the tongue or the pen, and
accidents.

A man who is obliged to justify his handling of a
matter in the eyes of other people often resorts to a
pretext. As the motive of his deviation from the most
suitable way of procedure he ascribes another reason
than that which actually prompted him. He does not
dare to admit his real motive because he knows that
his critics would not accept it as a sufficient justifica-
tion.

Rationalization is the name psychoanalysis gives to
the construction of a pretext to justify conduct in the
actor's own mind. Either the actor is loath to admit the
real motive to himself or he is not aware of the re-
pressed urge directing him. He disguises the subcon-

282 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

scious impulse by attaching to his actions reasons ac-
ceptable to his superego. He is not consciously cheating
and lying. He is himself a victim of his illusions and
wishful thinking. He lacks the courage to look squarely
at reality. As he dimly surmises that the cognition of the
true state of affairs would be unpleasant, undermine his
self-esteem, and weaken his resolution, he shrinks from
analyzing the problems beyond a certain point. This
is of course a rather dangerous attitude, a retreat from
an unwelcome reality into an imaginary world of fancy
that pleases better. A few steps further in the same
direction may lead to insanity.

However, in the lives of individuals there are checks
that prevent such rationalizations from becoming ram-
pant and wreaking havoc. Precisely because rationaliza-
tion is a type of behavior common to many, peo-
ple are watchful and even often suspect it where it
is absent. Some are always ready to unmask their
neighbors' sly attempts to bolster their own self-respect.
The most cleverly constructed legends of rationalization
cannot in the long run withstand the repeated attacks
of debunkers.

It is quite another thing with rationalization de-
veloped for the benefit of social groups. That can thrive
luxuriantly because it encounters no criticism from the
members of the group and because the criticism of
outsiders is dismissed as obviously biased. One of the
main tasks of historical analysis is to study the various
manifestations of rationalization in all fields of political
ideologies.

PSYCHOLOGY AND THYMOLOGY 283

6. Introspection

The passionate quarrel of the introspectionists and
anti-introspectionists refers to the problems of natural-
istic psychology and does not affect thymology. None
of the methods and procedures recommended by the
anti-introspectionist schools could convey any informa-
tion and knowledge about the phenomena which thy-
mology explores.

Being himself a valuing and acting ego, every man
knows the meaning of valuing and acting. He is aware
that he is not neutral with regard to the various states
of his environment, that he prefers certain states to
others, and that he consciously tries, provided the con-
ditions for such interference on his part are given, to
substitute a state that he likes better for one he likes
less. It is impossible to imagine a sane human being
who lacks this insight. It is no less impossible to con-
ceive how a being lacking this insight could acquire it
by means of any experience or instruction. The cate-
gories of value and of action are primary and aprioristic
elements present to every human mind. No science
should or could attack the problems involved without
prior knowledge of these categories.

Only because we are aware of these categories do we
know what meaning means and have a key to interpret
other people's activities. This awareness makes us dis-
tinguish in the external world two separate realms, that
of human affairs and that of nonhuman things, or that of
final causes and that of causality. It is not our task here

284 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

to deal with causality. But we must emphasize that the
concept of final causes does not stem from experience
and observation of something external; it is present in
the mind of every human being.

It is necessary to emphasize again and again that no
statement or proposition concerning human action can
be made that does not imply reference to ends aimed
at. The very concept of action is finalistic and is devoid
of any sense and meaning if there is no referring to
conscious aiming at chosen ends. There is no experi-
ence in the field of human action that can be had with-
out resorting to the category of means and ends. If the ob-
server is not familiar with the ideology, the technology,
and the therapeutics of the men whose behavior he ob-
serves, he cannot make head or tail of it. He sees peo-
ple running here and there and moving their hands, but
he begins to understand what it is all about only when
he begins to discover what they want to achieve.

If in employing the term "introspection" the positivist
refers to such statements as those expressed in the last
four words of the sentence "Paul runs to catch the
train," then we must say that no sane human being
could do without resorting to introspection in every
thought.

Chapter 13. Meaning and Use of the Study of History

1. The Why of History

In the eyes of the positivist philosopher the study
of mathematics and of the natural sciences is a prepara-
tion for action. Technology vindicates the labors of the
experimenter. No such justification can be advanced in
favor of the traditional methods resorted to by the his-
torians. They should abandon their unscientific anti-
quarianism, says the positivist, and turn to the study of
social physics or sociology. This discipline will abstract
from historical experience laws which could render to
social "engineering" the same services the laws of phys-
ics render to technological engineering.

In the opinion of the historicist philosopher the study
of history provides man with signposts showing him the
ways he has to walk along. Man can succeed only if
his actions fit into the trend of evolution. To discover
these trend lines is the main task of history.

The bankruptcy of both positivism and historicism
raises anew the question about the meaning, the value,
and the use of historical studies.

Some self-styled idealists think that reference to a
thirst for knowledge, inborn in all men or at least in
the higher types of men, answers these questions satis-
factorily. Yet the problem is to draw a boundary line
between the thirst for knowledge that impels the phi-

285

286 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

lologist to investigate the language of an African tribe
and the curiosity that stimulates people to peer into the
private lives of movie stars. Many historical events
interest the average man because hearing or reading
about them or seeing them enacted on the stage or
screen gives him pleasant, if sometimes shuddering,
sensations. The masses who greedily absorb newspaper
reports about crimes and trials are not driven by
Ranke's eagerness to know events as they really hap-
pened. The passions that agitate them are to be dealt
with by psychoanalysis, not by epistemology.

The idealist philosopher's justification of history as
knowledge for the mere sake of knowing fails to take
into account the fact that there are certainly things
which are not worth knowing. History's task is not to
record all past things and events but only those that
are historically meaningful. It is therefore necessary to
find a criterion that makes it possible to sift what is his-
torically meaningful from what is not. This cannot be
done from the point of view of a doctrine which deems
meritorious the mere fact of knowing something.

2. The Historical Situation

Acting man is faced with a definite situation. His ac-
tion is a response to the challenge offered by this situa-
tion; it is his re-action. He appraises the effects the
situation may have upon himself, i.e., he tries to es-
tablish what it means to him. Then he chooses and acts
in order to attain the end chosen.

As far as the situation can be completely described

MEANING AND USE OF STUDY OF HISTORY 287

by the methods of the natural sciences, as a rule the
natural sciences also provide an interpretation that en-
ables the individual to make his decision. If a leak in the
pipe line is diagnosed, the course of action to be re-
sorted to is in most cases plain. Where a full descrip-
tion of a situation requires more than reference to the
teachings of the applied natural sciences, recourse to
history is inevitable.

People have often failed to realize this because they
were deceived by the illusion that there is, between the
past and the future, an extended space of time that can
be called the present. As I have pointed out before, 1
the concept of such a present is not an astronomical or
chronometrical notion but a praxeological one. It re-
fers to the continuation of the conditions making a
definite kind of action possible. It is therefore different
for various fields of action. It is, moreover, never possi-
ble to know in advance how much of the future, of the
time not yet past, will have to be included in what we
call today the present. This can only be decided in
retrospect. If a man says "At present the relations be-
tween Ruritania and Lapputania are peaceful," it is un-
certain whether a later retrospective recording will in-
clude what today is called tomorrow in this period
of present time. This question can only be answered the
day after tomorrow.

There is no such thing as a nonhistorical analysis of
the present state of affairs. The examination and de-
scription of the present are necessarily a historical ac-
count of the past ending with the instant just passed.

1. Mises, Human Action, p. 101. See also above, pp. 202 f.

288 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

The description of the present state of politics or of
business is inevitably the narration of the events that
have brought about the present state. If, in business or
in government, a new man takes the helm, his first task
is to find out what has been done up to the last minute.
The statesman as well as the businessman learns about
the present situation from studying the records of the
past.

Historicism was right in stressing the fact that in
order to know something in the field of human affairs
one has to familiarize oneself with the way in which
it developed. The historicists' fateful error consisted
in the belief that this analysis of the past in itself con-
veys information about the course future action has to
take. What the historical account provides is the de-
scription of the situation; the reaction depends on the
meaning the actor gives it, on the ends he wants to at-
tain, and on the means he chooses for their attainment.
In 1860 there was slavery in many states of the Union.
The most careful and faithful record of the history of
this institution in general and in the United States in
particular did not map out the future policies of the
nation with regard to slavery. The situation in the
manufacturing and marketing of motorcars that Ford
found on the eve of his embarking upon mass produc-
tion did not indicate what had to be done in this field of
business. The historical analysis gives a diagnosis. The
reaction is determined, so far as the choice of ends is
concerned, by judgments of value and, so far as the
choice of means is concerned, by the whole body of

MEANING AND USE OF STUDY OF HISTOBY 289

teachings placed at man's disposal by praxeology and
technology.

Let those who want to reject the preceding state-
ments undertake to describe any present situation —
in philosophy, in politics, on a battlefield, on the stock
exchange, in an individual business enterprise — without
reference to the past.

3. History of the Remote Past

A skeptic may object: Granted that some historical
studies are descriptions of the present state of affairs,
but this is not true of all historical investigations. One
may concede that the history of Nazism contributes to
a better understanding of various phenomena in the
present political and ideological situation. But what
reference to our present worries have books on the
Mithras cult, on ancient Chaldea, or on the early dynas-
ties of the kings of Egypt? Such studies are merely
antiquarian, a display of curiosity. They are useless, a
waste of time, money, and manpower.

Criticisms such as these are self -contradictory. On the
one hand they admit that the present state can only
be described by a full account of the events that have
brought it about. On the other hand, they declare be-
forehand that certain events cannot possibly have influ-
enced the course of affairs that has led to the present
state. Yet this negative statement can only be made
after careful examination of all the material available,
not in advance on the ground of some hasty conclusions.

290 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

The mere fact that an event happened in a distant
country and a remote age does not in itself prove that
it has no bearing on the present. Jewish affairs of three
thousand years ago influence the lives of millions of
present-day Christian Americans more than what hap-
pened to the American Indians as late as in the second
part of the nineteenth century. In the present-day con-
flict of the Roman Church and the Soviets there are
elements that trace back to the great schism of the East-
ern and Western churches that originated more than a
thousand years ago. This schism cannot be examined
thoroughly without reference to the whole history of
Christianity from its early beginnings; the study of
Christianity presupposes analysis of Judaism and the
various influences — Chaldean, Egyptian, and so on —
that shaped it. There is no point in history at which we
can stop our investigation fully satisfied that we have
not overlooked any important factor. Whether civiliza-
tion must be considered a coherent process or we
should rather distinguish a multitude of civilizations
does not affect our problem. For there were mutual
exchanges of ideas between these autonomous civiliza-
tions, the extent and weight of which must be estab-
lished by historical research.

A superficial observer might think that the historians
are merely repeating what their predecessors have al-
ready said, at best occasionally retouching minor de-
tails of the picture. Actually the understanding of the
past is in perpetual flux. A historian's achievement con-
sists in presenting the past in a new perspective of un-
derstanding. The process of historical change is actu-

MEANING AND USE OF STUDY OF HISTORY 291

ated by, or rather consists in, the ceaseless transforma-
tion of the ideas determining human action. Among
these ideological changes those concerning the specific
historical understanding of the past play a conspicuous
role. What distinguishes a later from an earlier age is,
among other ideological changes, also the change in
the understanding of the preceding ages. Continu-
ously examining and reshaping our historical under-
standing, the historians contribute their share to what
is called the spirit of the age. 1

4. Falsifying History

Because history is not a useless pastime but a study
of the utmost practical importance, people have been
eager to falsify historical evidence and to misrepresent
the course of events. The endeavors to mislead posterity
about what really happened and to substitute a fabri-
cation for a faithful recording are often inaugurated by
the men who themselves played an active role in the
events, and begin with the instant of their happening,

1. Sometimes historical research succeeds in unmasking inveterate
errors and substituting a correct account of events for an inadequate
record even in fields that had up to then been considered fully and
satisfactorily explored and described. An outstanding example is the
startling discoveries concerning the history of the Roman emperors
Maxentius, Licinius, and Constantinus and the events that ended the
persecution of the Christians and paved the way for the victory of the
Christian Church. (See Henri Gregoire, Les Persecutions dans I'Em-
pire Romain in Memoires de l'Academie Royale de Belgique, Tome 46,
Fascicule 1, 1951, especially pp. 79-89, 15S-6.) But fundamental
changes in the historical understanding of events are more often
brought about without any or only slight revision of the description
of external events.

292 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

or sometimes even precede their occurrence. To lie
about historical facts and to destroy evidence has been
in the opinion of hosts of statesmen, diplomats, politi-
cians, and writers a legitimate part of the conduct of
public affairs and of writing history. One of the main
problems of historical research is to unmask such false-
hoods.

The falsifiers were often prompted by the desire to
justify their own or their party's actions from the point
of view of the moral code of those whose support or at
least neutrality they were eager to win. Such white-
washing is rather paradoxical if the actions concerned
appeared unobjectionable from the point of view of
the moral ideas of the time when they occurred, and are
condemned only by the moral standards of the fab-
ricator's contemporaries.

No serious obstacles to the efforts of the historians are
created by the machinations of the forgers and falsifiers.
What is much more difficult for the historian is to
avoid being misled by spurious social and economic
doctrines.

The historian approaches the records equipped with
the knowledge he has acquired in the fields of logic,
praxeology, and the natural sciences. If this knowledge
is defective, the result of his examination and analysis
of the material will be vitiated. A good part of the last
eighty years' contributions to economic and social his-
tory is almost useless on account of the writers' insuffi-
cient grasp of economics. The historicist thesis that the
historian needs no acquaintance with economics and
should even spurn it has vitiated the work of several

MEANING AND USE OF STUDY OF HISTORY 293

generations of historians. Still more devastating was the
effect of historicism upon those who called their publi-
cations describing various social and business condi-
tions of the recent past economic research.

5. History and Humanism

Pragmatic philosophy appreciates knowledge because
it gives power and makes people fit to accomplish
things. From this point of view the positivists reject his-
tory as useless. We have tried to demonstrate the serv-
ice that history renders to acting man in making him
understand the situation in which he has to act. We
have tried to provide a practical justification of history.

But there is more than this in the study of history. It
not only provides knowledge indispensable to prepar-
ing political decisions. It opens the mind toward an
understanding of human nature and destiny. It in-
creases wisdom. It is the very essence of that much mis-
interpreted concept, a liberal education. It is the fore-
most approach to humanism, the lore of the specifically
human concerns that distinguish man from other liv-
ing beings.

The newborn child has inherited from his ancestors
the physiological features of the species. He does not
inherit the ideological characteristics of human ex-
istence, the desire for learning and knowing. What dis-
tinguishes civilized man from a barbarian must be
acquired by every individual anew. Protracted strenu-
ous exertion is needed to take possession of man's spirit-
ual legacy.

294 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

Personal culture is more than mere familiarity with
the present state of science, technology, and civic af-
fairs. It is more than acquaintance with books and
paintings and the experience of travel and of visits to
museums. It is the assimilation of the ideas that roused
mankind from the inert routine of a merely animal ex-
istence to a life of reasoning and speculating. It is the
individual's effort to humanize himself by partaking in
the tradition of all the best that earlier generations
have bequeathed.

The positivist detractors of history contend that pre-
occupation with things past diverts people's attention
from the main task of mankind, the improvement of fu-
ture conditions. No blame could be more undeserved.
History looks backward into the past, but the lesson it
teaches concerns things to come. It does not teach in-
dolent quietism; it rouses man to emulate the deeds of
earlier generations. It addresses men as Dante's Ulysses
addressed his companions:

Considerate la vostra semenza:
Fatti non f oste a viver come bruti,
Ma per seguir virtude e conoscenza. 1

The dark ages were not dark because people were
committed to study of the intellectual treasures left by
ancient Hellenic civilization; they were dark so long as
these treasures were hidden and dormant. Once they

1. L'Infemo, xxvi, 118-20. In the translation by Longfellow:

Consider ye the seed from which ye sprang;
Ye were not made to live like unto brutes,
But for pursuit of virtue and of knowledge.

MEANING AND USE OF STUDY OF HISTORY 295

came to light again and began to stimulate the minds
of the most advanced thinkers, they contributed sub-
stantially to the inauguration of what is called today
Western civilization. The much criticized term "Renais-
sance" is pertinent in that it stresses the part the legacy
of antiquity played in the evolution of all the spiritual
features of the West. (The question whether the begin-
ning of the Renaissance should not be dated some cen-
turies farther back than Burckhardt set it need not
concern us here. )

The scions of the barbarian conquerors who first
began to study the ancients seriously were struck with
awe. They realized that they and their contemporaries
were faced with ideas they themselves could not have
developed. They could not help thinking of the philoso-
phy, the literature, and the arts of the classical age of
Greece and Rome as unsurpassable. They saw no road
to knowledge and wisdom but that paved by the an-
cients. To qualify a spiritual achievement as modern
had for them a pejorative connotation. But slowly,
from the seventeenth century on, people became aware
that the West was coming of age and creating a culture
of its own. They no longer bemoaned the disappearance
of a golden age of the arts and of learning, irretrievably
lost, and no longer thought of the ancient masterpieces
as models to be imitated but never equaled, still less
surpassed. They came to substitute the idea of progres-
sive improvement for the previously held idea of pro-
gressive degeneration.

In this intellectual development that taught modern
Europe to know its own worth and produced the self-

296 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

reliance of modern Western civilization, the study of
history was paramount. The course of human affairs
was no longer viewed as a mere struggle of ambitious
princes and army leaders for power, wealth, and glory.
The historians discovered in the flux of events the op-
eration of other forces than those commonly styled
political and military. They began to regard the histori-
cal process as actuated by man's urge toward better-
ment. They disagreed widely in their judgments of
value and in their appraisal of the various ends aimed
at by governments and reformers. But they were nearly
unanimous in holding that the main concern of every
generation is to render conditions more satisfactory
than their ancestors left them. They announced prog-
ress toward a better state of civic affairs as the main
theme of human endeavor.

Faithfulness to tradition means to the historian ob-
servance of the fundamental rule of human action,
namely, ceaseless striving to improve conditions. It
does not mean preservation of unsuitable old institu-
tions and clinging to doctrines long since discredited by
more tenable theories. It does not imply any concession
to the point of view of historicism.

6. History and the Rise of Aggressive Nationalism

The historian should utilize in his studies all the
knowledge that the other disciplines place at his dis-
posal. Inadequacy in this knowledge affects the re-
sults of his work.

If we were to consider the Homeric epics merely as

MEANING AND USE OF STUDY OF HISTORY 297

historical narratives, we would have to judge them un-
satisfactory on account of the theology or mythology
used to interpret and explain facts. Personal and politi-
cal conflicts between princes and heroes, the spread of
a plague, meteorological conditions, and other happen-
ings were attributed to the interference of gods. Mod-
ern historians refrain from tracing back earthly events
to supernatural causes. They avoid propositions that
would manifestly contradict the teachings of the natural
sciences. But they are often ignorant of economics and
committed to untenable doctrines concerning the prob-
lems of economic policies. Many cling to neomercan-
tilism, the social philosophy adopted almost without
exception by contemporary political parties and gov-
ernments and taught at all universities. They approve
the fundamental thesis of mercantilism that the gain
of one nation is the damage of other nations; that no
nation can win but by the loss of others. They think an
irreconcilable conflict of interests prevails among na-
tions. From this point of view many or even most his-
torians interpret all events. The violent clash of na-
tions is in their eyes a necessary consequence of a
nature-given and inevitable antagonism. This antago-
nism cannot be removed by any arrangement of in-
ternational relations. The advocates of integral free
trade, the Manchester or laissez-faire Liberals, are,
they think, unrealistic and do not see that free trade
hurts the vital interests of any nation resorting to it.

It is not surprising that the average historian shares
the fallacies and misconceptions prevailing among his
contemporaries. It was, however, not the historians but

298 EFISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

the anti-economists who developed the modern ide-
ology of international conflict and aggressive nation-
alism. The historians merely adopted and applied it. It
is not especially remarkable that in their writings they
took the side of their own nation and tried to justify
its claims and pretensions.

Books on history, especially those on the history of
one's own country, appeal more to the general reader
than do tracts on economic policy. The audience of the
historians is broader than that of the authors of books
on the balance of payments, foreign exchange control,
and similar matters. This explains why historians are
often considered the leading fomenters of the revival
of the warlike spirit and of the resulting wars of our
age. Actually they have merely popularized the teach-
ings of pseudo economists.

7. History and Judgments of Value

The subject of history is action and the judgments of
value directing action toward definite ends. History
deals with values, but it itself does not value. It looks
upon events with the eyes of an unaffected observer.
This is, of course, the characteristic mark of objective
thought and of the scientific search for truth. Truth
refers to what is or was, not to a state of affairs that
is not or was not but that would suit the wishes of the
truth-seeker better.

There is no need to add anything to what has been
said in the first part of this essay about the futility of
the search for absolute and eternal values. History is

MEANING AND USE OF STUDY OF HISTORY 299

no better able than any other science to provide stand-
ards of value that would be more than personal judg-
ments pronounced then and there by mortal men and
rejected then and there by other mortal men.

There are authors who assert that it is logically im-
possible to deal with historical facts without expressing
judgments of value. As they see it, one cannot say
anything relevant about these things without making
one value judgment after another. If, for example, one
deals with such phenomena as pressure groups or prosti-
tution, one has to realize that these phenomena them-
selves "are, as it were, constituted by value judg-
ments." x Now, it is true that many people employ
such terms as "pressure group" and almost every one
the term "prostitution" in a way that implies a judgment
of value. But this does not mean that the phenomena to
which these terms refer are constituted by value judg-
ments. Prostitution is defined by Geoffrey May as "the
practice of habitual or intermittent sexual union, more
or less promiscuous, for mercenary inducement." 2 A
pressure group is a group aiming to attain legislation
thought favorable to the interests of the group mem-
bers. There is no valuation whatever implied in the
mere use of such terms or in the reference to such
phenomena. It is not true that history, if it has to avoid
value judgments, would not be permitted to speak of
cruelty. 3 The first meaning of the word "cruel" in the

1. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago, University
of Chicago Press, 1953), p. 53.

2. G. May, "Prostitution," Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences,
12, 553.

3. Strauss, p. 52.

300 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

Concise Oxford Dictionary is "indifferent to, delight-
ing in, another's pain." 4 This definition is no less ob-
jective and free from any valuation than that given by
the same dictionary for sadism: "sexual perversion
marked by love of cruelty." 5 As a psychiatrist employs
the term "sadism" to describe the condition of a patient,
a historian may refer to "cruelty" in describing certain
actions. A dispute that may arise as to what causes
pain and what not, or as to whether in a concrete case
pain was inflicted because it gave pleasure to the actor
or for other reasons, is concerned with establishing
facts, not making judgments of value.

The problem of history's neutrality as to judgments
of value must not be confused with that of the attempts
to falsify the historical account. There have been his-
torians who were eager to represent battles lost by
their own nation's armed forces as victories and who
claimed for their own people, race, party, or faith every-
thing they regarded as meritorious and exculpated them
from everything they regarded as objectionable. The
textbooks of history prepared for the public schools are
marked by a rather naive parochialism and chauvinism.
There is no need to dwell on such futilities. But it must
be admitted that even for the most conscientious his-
torian abstention from judgments of value may offer
certain difficulties.

As a man and as a citizen the historian takes sides
in many feuds and controversies of his age. It is not

4. 3d ed., 1934, p. 273.

5. Ibid., p. 1042.

MEANING AND USE OF STUDY OF HISTORY 301

easy to combine scientific aloofness in historical studies
with partisanship in mundane interests. But that can
and has been achieved by outstanding historians. The
historian's world view may color his work. His repre-
sentation of events may be interlarded with remarks
that betray his feelings and wishes and divulge his
party affiliation. However, the postulate of scientific his-
tory's abstention from value judgments is not infringed
by occasional remarks expressing the preferences of
the historian if the general purport of the study is
not affected. If the writer, speaking of an inept com-
mander of the forces of his own nation or party, says
"unfortunately" the general was not equal to his task,
he has not failed in his duty as a historian. The his-
torian is free to lament the destruction of the master-
pieces of Greek art provided his regret does not influ-
ence his report of the events that brought about this
destruction.

The problem of Wertfreiheit must also be clearly dis-
tinguished from that of the choice of theories resorted
to for the interpretation of facts. In dealing with the
data available, the historian needs all the knowledge
provided by the other disciplines, by logic, mathe-
matics, praxeology, and the natural sciences. If what
these disciplines teach is insufficient or if the historian
chooses an erroneous theory out of several conflicting
theories held by the specialists, his effort is misled and
his performance is abortive. It may be that he chose
an untenable theory because he was biased and this
theory best suited his party spirit. But the acceptance

302 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

of a faulty doctrine may often be merely the outcome
of ignorance or of the fact that it enjoys greater popu-
larity than more correct doctrines.

The main source of dissent among historians is
divergence in regard to the teachings of all the other
branches of knowledge upon which they base their
presentation. To a historian of earlier days who be-
lieved in witchcraft, magic, and the devil's interfer-
ence with human affairs, things had a different aspect
than they have for an agnostic historian. The neo-
mercantilist doctrines of the balance of payments and
of the dollar shortage give an image of present-day
world conditions very different from that provided by
an examination of the situation from the point of view
of modern subjectivist economics.

Chapter 14. The Epistemohgical
Features of History

1. Prediction in the Natural Sciences

The natural sciences have two modes of predict-
ing future events: the sweeping prediction and the
statistical prediction. The former says: h follows a. The
latter says: In x% of all cases b follows a; in (100-x)%
of all cases non-fe follows a.

Neither of these predictions can be called apodictic.
Both are based upon experience. Experience is neces-
sarily of past events. It can be resorted to for the pre-
diction of future events only with the aid of the
assumption that an invariable uniformity prevails in
the concatenation and succession of natural phenom-
ena. Referring to this aprioristic assumption, the natural
sciences proceed to ampliative induction, inferring from
regularity observed in the past to the same regularity in
future events.

Ampliative induction is the epistemological basis of
the natural sciences. The fact that the various machines
and gadgets designed in accordance with the theorems
of the natural sciences run and work in the expected
way provides practical confirmation both of the theo-
rems concerned and of the inductive method. However,
this corroboration too refers only to the past. It does
not preclude the possibility that one day factors up to

303

304 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

now unknown to us may produce effects that will make
a shambles of our knowledge and technological skill.
The philosopher has to admit that there is no way
mortal man can acquire certain knowledge about the
future. But acting man has no reason to attach any im-
portance to the logical and epistemological precarious-
ness of the natural sciences. They provide the only
mental tool that can be used in the ceaseless struggle
for life. They have proved their practical worth. As no
other way to knowledge is open to man, no alternative
is left to him. If he wants to survive and to render his
life more agreeable, he must accept the natural sciences
as guides toward technological and therapeutical suc-
cess. He must behave as if the predictions of the natural
sciences were truth, perhaps not eternal, unshakable
truth, but at least truth for that period of time for which
human action can plan to provide.

The assurance with which the natural sciences an-
nounce their findings is not founded solely upon this
as if. It is also derived from the intersubjectivity and
objectivity of the experience that is the raw material
of the natural sciences and the starting point of their
reasoning. The apprehension of external objects is such
that among all those in a position to become aware of
them agreement about the nature of that apprehension
can easily be reached. There is no disagreement about
pointer readings that cannot be brought to a final de-
cision. Scientists may disagree about theories. They
never lastingly disagree about the establishment of
what is called pure facts. There can be no dispute as to

EPISTEMOLOGICAL FEATURES OF HISTORY 305

whether a definite piece of stuff is copper or iron or its
weight is two pounds or five.

It would be preposterous to fail to recognize the
significance of the epistemological discussions concern-
ing induction, truth, and the mathematical calculus of
probability. Yet these philosophical disquisitions do not
further our endeavors to analyze the epistemological
problems of the sciences of human action. What the
epistemology of the sciences of human action has to
remember about the natural sciences is that their theo-
rems, although abstracted from experience, i.e., from
what happened in the past, have been used successfully
for designing future action.

2. History and Prediction

In their logical aspect the procedures applied in the
most elaborate investigations in the field of natural
events do not differ from the mundane logic of every-
body's daily business. The logic of science is not differ-
ent from the logic resorted to by any individual in the
meditations that precede his actions or weigh their
effects afterward. There is only one a priori and only
one logic conceivable to the human mind. There is con-
sequently only one body of natural science that can
stand critical examination by the logical analysis of
available experience.

As there is only one mode of logical thinking, there
is only one praxeology (and, for that matter, only one
mathematics ) valid for all. As there is no human think-

306 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

ing that would fail to distinguish between A and non-A,
so there is no human action that would not distinguish
between means and ends. This distinction implies that
man values, i.e., that he prefers an A to a B.

For the natural sciences the limit of knowledge is
the establishment of an ultimate given, that is, of a fact
that cannot be traced back to another fact of which it
would appear as the necessary consequence. For the
sciences of human action the ultimate given is the judg-
ments of value of the actors and the ideas that engender
these judgments of value.

It is precisely this fact that precludes employing the
methods of the natural sciences to solve problems of
human action. Observing nature, man discovers an
inexorable regularity in the reaction of objects to stim-
uli. He classifies things according to the pattern of their
reaction. A concrete thing, for example copper, is some-
thing that reacts in the same way in which other speci-
mens of the same class react. As the patterns of this
reaction are known, the engineer knows what future
reaction on the part of copper he has to expect. This
foreknowledge, notwithstanding the epistemological
reservations referred to in the preceding section, is
considered apodictic. All our science and philosophy,
all our civilization would at once be called into ques-
tion if, in but one instance and for but one moment, the
patterns of these reactions varied.

What distinguishes the sciences of human action is
the fact that there is no such foreknowledge of the in-
dividuals' value judgments, of the ends they will aim
at under the impact of these value judgments, of the

EPISTEMOLOGICAL FEATURES OF HISTORY 307

means they will resort to in order to attain the ends
sought and of the effects of their actions insofar as these
are not entirely determined by factors the knowledge of
which is conveyed by the natural sciences. We know
something about these things, but our knowledge of
them and about them is categorially different from the
kind of knowledge the experimental natural sciences
provide about natural events. We could call it histor-
ical knowledge if this term were not liable to misinter-
pretation in suggesting that this knowledge serves only
or predominantly to elucidate past events. Yet its most
important use is to be seen in the service it renders to
the anticipation of future conditions and to the design-
ing of action that necessarily always a.ims at affecting
future conditions.

Something happens in the field of the nation's domes-
tic politics. How will Senator X, the outstanding man
of the green party, react? Many informed men may
have an opinion about the senator's expected reaction.
Perhaps one of these opinions will prove to be correct.
But it may also happen that none of them was right and
that the senator reacts in a way not prognosticated by
anybody. And then a similar dilemma arises in weigh-
ing the effects brought about by the way the senator
has reacted. This second dilemma cannot be resolved
as the first one was, as soon as the senator's action be-
comes known. For centuries to come historians may dis-
agree about the effects produced by certain actions.

Traditional epistemology, exclusively preoccupied
with the logical problems of the natural sciences and
wholly ignorant even of the existence of the field of

308 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

praxeology, tried to deal with these problems from the
point of view of its narrow-minded, dogmatic ortho-
doxy. It condemned all the sciences that were not ex-
perimental natural sciences as backward and committed
to an outdated philosophical and metaphysical, i.e., in
their usage, stupid, method. It confused probability as
the term is used in colloquial expressions referring to
history and practical everyday action with the concept
of probability as employed in the mathematical calculus
of probability. Finally sociology made its appearance.
It promised to substitute true science for the rubbish
and empty gossiping of the historians in developing an
aposteriori science of "social laws" to be derived from
historical experience.

This disparagement of the methods of history moved
first Dilthey, then Windelband, Rickert, Max Weber,
Croce, and Collingwood to opposition. Their interpre-
tations were in many regards unsatisfactory. They were
deluded by many of the fundamental errors of histori-
cism. All but Collingwood failed entirely to recognize
the unique epistemological character of economics.
They were vague in their references to psychology. The
first four moreover were not free from the chauvinistic
bias which in the age of pan-Germanism induced even
the most eminent German thinkers to belittle the teach-
ings of what they called Western philosophy. But the
fact remains that they succeeded brilliantly in elucidat-
ing the epistemological features of the study of history.
They destroyed forever the prestige of those epistemo-
logical doctrines that blamed history for being history
and for not being "social physics." They exposed the fu-

EPISTEMOLOGICAL FEATURES OF HISTORY 309

tility of the search after aposteriori laws of historical
change or historical becoming that would make possible
the prediction of future history in the way the physicists
predict the future behavior of copper. They made his-
tory self-conscious.

3. The Specific Understanding of History

Praxeology, the a priori science of human action,
and, more specifically, its up to now best-developed
part, economics, provides in its field a consummate in-
terpretation of past events recorded and a consummate
anticipation of the effects to be expected from future
actions of a definite kind. Neither this interpretation
nor this anticipation tells anything about the actual
content and quality of the acting individuals' judgments
of value. Both presuppose that the individuals are valu-
ing and acting, but their theorems are independent of
and unaffected by the particular characteristics of this
valuing and acting. These characteristics are for the
sciences of human action ultimate data, they are what
is called historical individuality.

However, there is a momentous difference between
the ultimate given in the natural sciences and that in
the field of human action. An ultimate given of nature
is — for the time being, that is, until someone succeeds in
exposing it as the necessary consequence of some other
ultimate given — a stopping point for human reflection.
It is as it is, that is all that man can say about it.

But it is different with the ultimate given of human
action, with the value judgments of individuals and the

310 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

actions induced by them. They are ultimately given as
they cannot be traced back to something of which they
would appear to be the necessary consequence. If this
were not the case, it would not be permissible to call
them an ultimate given. But they are not, like the ulti-
mate given in the natural sciences, a stopping point for
human reflection. They are the starting point of a spe-
cific mode of reflection, of the specific understanding of
the historical sciences of human action.

If the experimenter in the laboratory has established
a fact which, at least for the time being, cannot be
traced back to another fact of which it would appear as
a derivative, there is nothing more to be said about the
issue. But if we are faced with a value judgment and
the resulting action, we may try to understand how
they originated in the mind of the actor.

This specific understanding of human action as it
is practiced by everybody in all his interhuman rela-
tions and actions is a mental procedure that must not
be confused with any of the logical schemes resorted
to by the natural sciences and by everybody in purely
technological or therapeutical activities.

The specific understanding aims at the cognition of
other people's actions. It asks in retrospect: What was
he doing, what was he aiming at? What did he mean in
choosing this definite end? What was the outcome of his
action? Or it asks analogous questions for the future:
What ends will he choose? What will he do in order to
attain them? What will the outcome of his action be?

In actual life all these questions are seldom asked in
isolation. They are mostly connected with other ques-

EPISTEMOLOGICAL FEATURES OF HISTORY 311

tions referring to praxeology or to the natural sciences.
The categorial distinctions that epistemology is bound
to make are tools of our mental operations. The real
events are complex phenomena and can be grasped
by the mind only if each of the various tools available
is employed for its proper purpose.

The main epistemological problem of the specific
understanding is: How can a man have any knowledge
of the future value judgments and actions of other peo-
ple? The traditional method of dealing with this prob-
lem, commonly called the problem of the alter ego or
Fremdverstehen, is unsatisfactory. It focused attention
upon grasping the meaning of other people's behavior
in the "present" or, more correctly, in the past. But the
task with which acting man, that is, everybody, is faced
in all relations with his fellows does not refer to the
past; it refers to the future. To know the future reac-
tions of other people is the first task of acting man.
Knowledge of their past value judgments and actions,
although indispensable, is only a means to this end.

It is obvious that this knowledge which provides a
man with the ability to anticipate to some degree other
people's future attitudes is not a priori knowledge. The
a priori discipline of human action, praxeology, does
not deal with the actual content of value judgments;
it deals only with the fact that men value and then act
according to their valuations. What we know about
the actual content of judgments of value can be derived
only from experience. We have experience of other
people's past value judgments and actions; and we have
experience of our own value judgments and actions.

312 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

The latter is commonly called introspection. To distin-
guish it from experimental psychology, the term thy-
mology was suggested in an earlier chapter * for that
branch of knowledge which deals with human judg-
ments of values and ideas.

Wilhelm Dilthey stressed the role that thymology —
of course he said psychology — plays in the Geisteswis-
senschaften, the mental or moral sciences, the sciences
dealing with human thoughts, ideas, and value judg-
ments, and their operation in the external world. 2 It is
not our task to trace back Dilthey 's ideas to earlier au-
thors. There is little doubt that he owed much to prede-
cessors, especially to David Hume. But the examination
of these influences must be left to treatises dealing with
the history of philosophy. Dilthey's chief contribution
was his pointing out in what respect the kind of psy-
chology he was referring to was epistemologically and
methodologically different from the natural sciences
and therefore also from experimental psychology.

4. Thymological Experience

Thymological experience is what we know about hu-
man value judgments, the actions determined by them,
and the responses these actions arouse in other people.
As has been said, this experience stems either from in-
trospection or from intercourse with other men, from
our acting in various interhuman relations.

1. See p. 265.

2. See especially Dilthey, Einleitung in die Geistestoissenschaften,
Leipzig, 1883. See also H. A. Hodges, The Philosophy of Wilhelm
Dilthey (London, 1952), pp. 170 ff.

EPISTEMOLOGICAL FEATURES OF HISTORY 313

Like all experience, thymological experience too is
necessarily knowledge of things that happened in the
past. For reasons made sufficiently clear in the earlier
sections of this essay, it is not permitted to assign to it
the meaning the natural sciences assign to the results of
experimentation. What we learn from thymological ex-
perience never has the significance of what is called in
the natural sciences an experimentally established fact.
It always remains a historical fact. Thymology is a his-
torical discipline.

For lack of any better tool, we must take recourse to
thymology if we want to anticipate other people's fu-
ture attitudes and actions. Out of our general thymo-
logical experience, acquired either directly from observ-
ing our fellow men and transacting business with them
or indirectly from reading and from hearsay, as well as
out of our special experience acquired in previous con-
tacts with the individuals or groups concerned, we try
to form an opinion about their future conduct. It is
easy to see in what the fundamental difference consists
between this kind of anticipation and that of an engi-
neer designing the plan for the construction of a bridge.

Thymology tells no more than that man is driven
by various innate instincts, various passions, and various
ideas. The anticipating individual tries to set aside those
factors that manifestly do not play any role in the con-
crete case under consideration. Then he chooses among
the remaining ones.

It is usual to qualify such prognoses as more or less
probable and to contrast them with the forecasts of
the natural sciences which once were called certain and

314 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

are still considered certain and exact by people not fa-
miliar with the problems of logic and epistemology.
Setting aside these latter problems, we must emphasize
that the probability of the prognoses concerning future
human action has little in common with that category
of probability which is dealt with in the mathematical
calculus of probability. The former is case probability
and not class probability. 1 In order to prevent confu-
sion, it is advisable to refer to case probability as likeli-
hood.

In the specific understanding of future events there
are as a rule two orders of likelihood to be ascertained.
The first refers to the enumeration of the factors that
could possibly take or have taken effect in producing
the outcome in question. The second refers to the influ-
ence of each of these factors in the production of the
outcome. It can easily be seen that the likelihood that
the enumeration of the operating factors will be correct
and complete is much higher than the likelihood that
the proper extent of participation will be attributed to
each. Yet the correctness or incorrectness of a prognosis
depends on the correctness or incorrectness of this lat-
ter evaluation. The precariousness of forecasting is
mainly due to the intricacy of this second problem. It is
not only a rather puzzling question in forecasting future
events. It is no less puzzling in retrospect for the his-
torian.

It is not enough for the statesman, the politician, the
general, or the entrepreneur to know all the factors that
can possibly contribute to the determination of a future

1. See above, p. 91.

EPISTEMOLOGICAL FEATURES OF HISTORY 315

event. In order to anticipate correctly they must also
anticipate correctly the quantity as it were of each
factor's contribution and the instant at which its contri-
bution will become effective. And later the historians
will have to face the same difficulty in analyzing and
understanding the case in retrospect.

5. Real Types and Ideal Types

The natural sciences classify the things of the external
world according to their reaction to stimuli. Since cop-
per is something that reacts in a definite way, the name
copper is denied to a thing that reacts in a different
way. In establishing the fact that a thing is copper,
we make a forecast about its future behavior. What is
copper cannot be iron or oxygen.

In acting — in their daily routine, as well as in tech-
nology and therapeutics, and also in history — people
employ "real types," that is, class concepts distinguish-
ing people or institutions according to neatly definable
traits. Such classification can be based on concepts of
praxeology and economics, of jurisprudence, of tech-
nology, and of the natural sciences. It may refer to
Italians, for example, either as the inhabitants of a defi-
nite area, or as people endowed with a special legal
characteristic, viz., Italian nationality, or as a definite
linguistic group. This kind of classification is independ-
ent of specific understanding. It points toward some-
thing that is common to all members of the class. All
Italians in the geographic sense of the term are affected
by geological or meteorological events that touch their

316 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

country. All Italian citizens are concerned by legal acts
relating to people of their nationality. All Italians in
the linguistic sense of the term are in a position to make
themselves understood to one another. Nothing more
than this is meant when a man is called an Italian in one
of these three connotations.

The characteristic mark of an "ideal type," on the
other hand, is that it implies some proposition concern-
ing valuing and acting. If an ideal type refers to peo-
ple, it implies that in some respect these men are valu-
ing and acting in a uniform or similar way. When it re-
fers to institutions, it implies that these institutions are
products of uniform or similar ways of valuing and act-
ing or that they influence valuing and acting in a uni-
form or similar way.

Ideal types are constructed and employed on the
basis of a definite mode of understanding the course of
events, whether in order to forecast the future or to
analyze the past. If in dealing with American elections
one refers to the Italian vote, the implication is that
there are voters of Italian descent whose voting is to
some extent influenced by their Italian origin. That
such a group of voters exists will hardly be denied; but
people disagree widely as to the number of citizens in-
cluded in this group and the degree to which their vot-
ing is determined by their Italian ideologies. It is this
uncertainty about the power of the ideology concerned,
this impossibility of finding out and measuring its effect
upon the minds of the individual members of the group,
that characterizes the ideal type as such and distin-
guishes it from real types. An ideal type is a conceptual

EPISTEMOLOGICAL FEATURES OF HISTORY 317

tool of understanding and the service that it renders
depends entirely on the serviceableness of the definite
mode of understanding.

Ideal types must not be confused with the types
referred to in moral or political "oughts," which we may
call "ought types." The Marxians contend that all prole-
tarians necessarily behave in a definite way, and the
Nazis make the analogous statement with regard to all
Germans. But neither of these parties can deny that its
declaration is untenable as a proposition about what is,
since there are proletarians and Germans who deviate
from the modes of acting which these parties call prole-
tarian and German respectively. What they really have
in mind in announcing their dicta is a moral obligation.
What they mean is: Every proletarian ought to act the
way the party program and its legitimate expositors
declare to be proletarian; every German ought to act
the way the nationalist party considers genuinely Ger-
man. Those proletarians or Germans whose conduct
does not comply with the rules are smeared as traitors.
The ought type belongs to the terminology of ethics and
politics and not to that of the epistemology of the sci-
ences of human action.

It is furthermore necessary to separate ideal types
from organizations having the same name. In dealing
with nineteenth-century French history we frequently
encounter references to the Jesuits and to the Free
Masons. These terms may refer to acts of the organiza-
tions designated by these names, e.g., "The Jesuit order
opened a new school" or 'The lodges of the Free
Masons donated a sum of money for the relief of pec-

318 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

pie who suffered in a fire." Or they may refer to ideal
types, pointing out that members of these organizations
and their friends are in definite respects acting under
the sway of a definite Jesuit or Masonic ideology. There
is a difference between stating that a political move-
ment is organized, guided, and financed by the order
or the lodges as such and saying that it is inspired by
an ideology of which the order or the lodges are con-
sidered the typical or outstanding representatives. The
first proposition has no reference to the specific under-
standing. It concerns facts that could be confirmed or
disproved by the study of records and the hearing of
witnesses. The second assertion regards understanding.
In order to form a judgment on its adequacy or inade-
quacy one has to analyze ideas and doctrines and their
bearing upon actions and events. Methodologically
there is a fundamental difference between the analysis
of the impact of the ideology of Marxian socialism upon
the mentality and the conduct of our contemporaries
and the study of the actions of the various communist
and socialist governments, parties, and conspiracies. 1

1. There is a distinction between the Communist party or a Com-
munist party as an organized body on the one hand and the com-
munist ( Marxian ) ideology on the other. In dealing with contemporary
history and politics people often fail to realize the fact that many
people who are not members — "card-bearing" or dues-paying members
— of a party organization may be, either totally or in certain regards,
under the sway of the party ideology. Especially in weighing the
strength of the ideas of communism or of those of Nazism in Germany
or of Fascism in Italy serious confusion resulted from this error.
Furthermore it is necessary to know that an ideology may sometimes
also influence the minds of those who believe that they are entirely
untouched by it or who even consider themselves its deadly foes and
are fighting it passionately. The success of Nazism in Germany in 1933

EPISTEMOLOGICAL FEATURES OF HISTORY 319

The service a definite ideal type renders to the acting
man in his endeavors to anticipate future events and to
the historian in his analysis of the past is dependent on
the specific understanding that led to its construction.
To question the usefulness of an ideal type for explain-
ing a definite problem, one must criticize the mode of
understanding involved.

In dealing with conditions in Latin America the ideal
type "general" may be of some use. There have been
definite ideologies current which in some respects deter-
mined the role played by many — not by all — army
leaders who became important in politics. In France too
ideas prevailed that by and large circumscribed the
position of generals in politics and the role of such men
as Cavaignac, MacMahon, Boulanger, Petain, and de
Gaulle. But in the United States it would make no sense
to employ the ideal type of a political general or a gen-
eral in politics. No American ideology exists that would
consider the armed forces as a separate entity distin-
guished from and opposed to the "civilian" population.
There is consequently no political esprit de corps in
the army and its leaders have no authoritarian prestige
among "civilians." A general who becomes president
ceases not only legally but also politically to be a mem-
ber of the army.

was due to the fact that the immense majority of the Germans, even
of those voting the ticket of the Marxist parties, of the Catholic
Centrum party, and of the various "bourgeois" splinter parties, were
committed to the ideas of radical aggressive nationalism, while the
Nazis themselves had adopted the basic principles of the socialist
program. Great Britain would not have gone socialist if the Conserva-
tives, not to speak of the "Liberals," had not virtually endorsed
socialist ideas.

320 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

In referring to ideal types the historian of the past as
well as the historian of the future, i.e., acting man, must
never forget that there is a fundamental difference
between the reactions of the objects of the natural
sciences and those of men. It is this difference that peo-
ple have wanted to bring into relief in speaking of the
opposition of mind and matter, of freedom of the will,
and of individuality. Ideal types are expedients to sim-
plify the treatment of the puzzling multiplicity and
variety of human affairs. In employing them one must
always be aware of the deficiencies of any kind of sim-
plification. The exuberance and variability of human
life and action cannot be fully seized by concepts and
definitions. Some unanswered or even unanswerable
questions always remain, some problems whose solution
passes the ability even of the greatest minds.

PART FOUR. THE COURSE OF HISTORY

Chapter 15. Philosophical Interpretations of History

1. Philosophies of History and Philosophical
Interpretations of History

The attempts to provide a philosophical interpreta-
tion of history must not be confused with any of the
various schemes of philosophy of history. They do not
aim at the discovery of the end toward which the proc-
ess of human history is tending. They try to bring into
relief factors that play a momentous part in determin-
ing the course of historical events. They deal with the
ends individuals and groups of individuals are aiming
at, but they abstain from any opinion about the end
and the meaning of the historical process as a whole
or about a preordained destiny of mankind. They rely
not upon intuition but upon a study of history. They
try to demonstrate the correctness of their interpreta-
tion by referring to historical facts. In this sense they
can be called discursive and scientific.

It is useless to enter into a discussion about the merits
and demerits of a definite brand of philosophy of his-
tory. A philosophy of history has to be accepted as a
whole or rejected as a whole. No logical arguments and
no reference to facts can be advanced either for or
against a philosophy of history. There is no question of
reasoning about it; what matters is solely belief or dis-
belief. It is possible that in a few years the entire earth

323

324 THE COURSE OF HISTORY

will be subject to socialism. If this occurs, it will by no
means confirm the Marxian variety of philosophy of
history. Socialism will not be the outcome of a law op-
erating "independently of the will of men" with "the
inexorability of a law of nature." It will be precisely
the outcome of the ideas that got into the heads of men,
of the conviction shared by the majority that socialism
will be more beneficial to them than capitalism.

A philosophical interpretation of history can be mis-
used for political propaganda. However, it is easy to
separate the scientific core of the doctrine from its
political adaptation and modification.

2. Environtnentalism

Environmentalism is the doctrine that explains histor-
ical changes as produced by the environment in which
people are living. There are two varieties of this doc-
trine: the doctrine of physical or geographical environ-
mentalism and the doctrine of social or cultural envi-
ronmentalism.

The former doctrine asserts that the essential features
of a people's civilization are brought about by geo-
graphical factors. The physical, geological, and cli-
matic conditions and the flora and fauna of a region
determine the thoughts and the actions of its inhabit-
ants. In the most radical formulation of their thesis,
anthropogeographical authors are eager to trace back
all differences between races, nations, and civilizations
to the operation of man's natural environment.

The inherent misconception of this interpretation is

INTERPRETATIONS OF HISTORY 325

that it looks upon geography as an active and upon
human action as a passive factor. However, the geo-
graphical environment is only one of the components
of the situation in which man is placed by his birth,
that makes him feel uneasy and causes him to employ
his reason and his bodily forces to get rid of this un-
easiness as best he may. Geography (nature) provides
on the one hand a provocation to act and on the
other hand both means that can be utilized in acting
and insurmountable limits imposed upon the human
striving for betterment. It provides a stimulus but not
the response. Geography se"ts a task, but man has to
solve it. Man lives in a definite geographical environ-
ment and is forced to adjust his action to the conditions
of this environment. But the way in which he adjusts
himself, the methods of his social, technological, and
moral adaptation, are not determined by the external
physical factors. The North American continent pro-
duced neither the civilization of the Indian aborigines
nor that of the Americans of European extraction.

Human action is conscious reaction to the stimulus
offered by the conditions under which man lives. As
some of the components of the situation in which he
lives and is called upon to act vary in different parts of
the globe, there are also geographical differences in
civilization. The wooden shoes of the Dutch fishermen
would not be useful to the mountaineers of Switzerland.
Fur coats are practical in Canada but less so in Tahiti.

The doctrine of social and cultural environmentalism
merely stresses the fact that there is — necessarily —
continuity in human civilization. The rising generation

326 THE COURSE OF HISTORY

does not create a new civilization from the grass roots.
It enters into the social and cultural milieu that the pre-
ceding generations have created. The individual is born
at a definite date in history into a definite situation
determined by geography, history, social institutions,
mores, and ideologies. He has daily to face the altera-
tion in the structure of this traditional surrounding
effected by the actions of his contemporaries. He does
not simply live in the world. He lives in a circumscribed
spot. He is both furthered and hampered in his acting
by all that is peculiar to this spot. But he is not deter-
mined by it.

The truth contained in environmentalism is the cog-
nition that every individual lives at a definite epoch in
a definite geographical space and acts under the condi-
tions determined by this environment. The environment
determines the situation but not the response. To the
same situation different modes of reacting are thinkable
and feasible. Which one the actors choose depends on
their individuality.

3. The Egalitarians' Interpretation of History

Most biologists maintain that there is but one species
of man. The fact that all people can interbreed and
produce fertile offspring is taken as evidence of the
zoological unity of mankind. Yet within the species
Homo sapiens there are numerous variations which
make it imperative to distinguish subspecies or races.

There are considerable bodily differences between

INTERPRETATIONS OF HISTORY 327

the members of various races; there are also remarkable
although less momentous differences between members
of the same race, subrace, tribe, or family, even between
brothers and sisters, even between nonidentical twins.
Every individual is already at birth different bodily
from all other specimens, is characterized by individual
traits of his own. But no matter how great these dif-
ferences may be, they do not affect the logical structure
of the human mind. There is not the slightest evidence
for the thesis developed by various schools of thought
that the logic and thinking of different races are cate-
gorially different.

The scientific treatment of the inborn differences
between individuals and of their biological and physi-
ological inheritance has been grossly muddled and
twisted by political prepossessions. Behavioristic psy-
chology maintains that all differences in mental traits
among men are caused by environmental factors. It
denies all influence of bodily build upon mental activ-
ities. It holds that equalizing the outer conditions of
human life and education could wipe out all cultural
differences between individuals, whatever their racial
or family affiliation might be. Observation contradicts
these assertions. It shows that there is a degree of corre-
lation between bodily structure and mental traits. An
individual inherits from his parents and indirectly from
his parents' ancestors not only the specific biological
characteristics of his body but also a constitution of
mental powers that circumscribes the potentialities of
his mental achievements and his personality. Some peo-

328 THE COURSE OF HISTORY

pie are endowed with an innate ability for definite kinds
of activities while others lack this gift entirely or possess
it only to a lesser degree.

The behavioristic doctrine was used to support the
program of socialism of the egalitarian variety. Egali-
tarian socialism attacks the classical liberal principle of
equality before the law. In its opinion the inequalities
of income and wealth existing in the market economy
are in their origin and their social significance not dif-
ferent from those existing in a status society. They are
the outcome of usurpations and expropriations and the
resulting exploitation of the masses brought about by
arbitrary violence. The beneficiaries of this violence
form a dominating class as the instrument of which the
state forcibly holds down the exploited. What distin-
guishes the "capitalist" from the "common man" is the
fact that he has joined the gang of the unscrupulous ex-
ploiters. The only quality required in an entrepreneur
is villainy. His business, says Lenin, is accounting and
the control of production and distribution, and these
things have been "simplified by capitalism to the ut-
most till they have become the extraordinarily simple
operations of watching, recording and issuing receipts,
within the reach of anybody who can read and write
and knows the first four rules of arithmetic." 1 Thus the
"property privileges" of the "capitalists" are no less
superfluous and therefore parasitic than the status privi-
leges of the aristocratic landowners were on the eve of
the Industrial Revolution. In establishing a spurious

1. Lenin, State and Revolution (New York, International Publishers,
1932), pp. 83 f.

INTERPRETATIONS OF HISTORY 329

equality before the law and preserving the most iniqui-
tous of all privileges, private property, the bourgeoisie
has duped the unsuspecting people and robbed them
of the fruits of the revolution.

This doctrine, already dimly present in the writings
of some earlier authors and popularized by Jean Jacques
Rousseau and by Babeuf, was transformed in the Marx-
ian class-struggle doctrine into an interpretation of the
whole process of human history from the point of view
of usurpation. In the context of the Marxian philosophy
of history the emergence of status and class distinctions
was a necessary and historically inevitable result of the
evolution of the material productive forces. The mem-
bers of the dominating castes and classes were not indi-
vidually responsible for the acts of oppression and ex-
ploitation. They were not morally inferior to those they
held in subservience. They were simply the men in-
scrutable destiny singled out to perform a socially,
economically, and historically necessary task. As the
state of the material productive forces determined each
individual's role in the consummation of the historical
process, it was their part to carry out all they accom-
plished.

But quite a different description of the march of hu-
man affairs is provided by those writings in which Marx
and Engels deal with historical problems or with po-
litical issues of their own time. There they unreservedly
espouse the popular doctrine of the inherent moral cor-
ruption of the "exploiters." Human history appears as a
process of progressive moral corruption that started
when the blissful conditions of primeval village com-

330 THE COURSE OF HISTORY

munities were disrupted by the greed of selfish individ-
uals. Private ownership of land is the original sin which
step by step brought about all the disasters that have
plagued mankind. What elevates an "exploiter" above
the level of his fellow men is merely villainy. In the
three volumes of Das Kapital unscrupulousness is the
only quality alluded to as required in an "exploiter."
The improvement of technology and the accumulation
of wealth that Marx considered prerequisite for the
realization of socialism are described as a result of the
spontaneous evolution of the mythical material pro-
ductive forces. The "capitalists" do not get any credit
for these achievements. All that these villains do is to
expropriate those who should by rights have the fruits
of the operation of the material productive forces. They
appropriate to themselves "surplus value." They are
merely parasites, and mankind can do without them.

This interpretation of history from the egalitarian
point of view is the official philosophy of our age. It
assumes that an automatic process of historical evolu-
tion tends to improve technological methods of produc-
tion, to accumulate wealth, and to provide the means
for improving the standard of living of the masses.
Looking back upon conditions in the capitalistic West
as they developed in the last century or two, statisti-
cians see a trend of rising productivity and blithely
surmise that this trend will continue, whatever soci-
ety's economic organization may be. As they see it,
a trend of historical evolution is something above the
level of the actions of men, a "scientifically" established

INTERPRETATIONS OF HISTORY 331

fact which cannot be affected by men and by the social
system. Hence no harm can result from institutions —
such as the contemporary tax legislation — which aim
at ultimately wiping out the inequalities of income and
wealth.

The egalitarian doctrine is manifestly contrary to all
the facts established by biology and by history. Only
fanatical partisans of this theory can contend that what
distinguishes the genius from the dullard is entirely
the effect of postnatal influences. The presumption that
civilization, progress, and improvement emanate from
the operation of some mythical factor — in the Marxian
philosophy, the material productive forces — shaping
the minds of men in such a way that certain ideas are
successively produced contemporaneously in them, is
an absurd fable.

There has been a lot of empty talk about the non-
existence of differences among men. But there has never
been an attempt to organize society according to the
egalitarian principle. The author of an egalitarian tract
and the leader of an egalitarian party by their very
activity contradict the principle to which they pay lip
service. The historical role played by the egalitarian
creed was to disguise the most abject forms of despotic
oppression. In Soviet Russia egalitarianism is pro-
claimed as one of the main dogmas of the official creed.
But Lenin was deified after his death, and Stalin was
worshiped in life as no ruler has been since the days of
the declining Roman Empire.

The egalitarian fables do not explain the course of

332 THE COURSE OF HISTORY

past history, they are out of place in an analysis of
economic problems, and useless in planning future
political action.

4. The Racial Interpretation of History

It is a historical fact that the civilizations developed
by various races are different. In earlier ages it was
possible to establish this truth without attempting to
distinguish between higher and lower civilizations.
Each race, one could contend, develops a culture that
conforms to its wishes, wants, and ideals. The character
of a race finds its adequate expression in its achieve-
ments. A race may imitate accomplishments and insti-
tutions developed by other races, but it does not long to
abandon its own cultural pattern entirely and to substi-
tute an imported alien system for it. If about two thou-
sand years ago the Greco-Romans and the Chinese had
learned about each other's civilizations, neither race
would have admitted the superiority of the other's civi-
lization.

But it is different in our age. The non-Caucasians may
hate and despise the white man, they may plot his de-
struction and take pleasure in extravagant praise of
their own civilizations. But they yearn for the tangible
achievements of the West, for its science, technology,
therapeutics, its methods of administration and of in-
dustrial management. Many of their spokesmen declare
that they want only to imitate the material culture of
the West, and to do even that only so far as it does not
conflict with their indigenous ideologies or jeopardize

INTERPRETATIONS OF HISTORY 333

their religious beliefs and observances. They fail to see
that the adoption of what they disparagingly call the
merely material achievements of the West is incom-
patible with preserving their traditional rites and taboos
and their customary style of life. They indulge in the
illusion that their peoples could borrow the technology
of the West and attain a higher material standard of
living without having first in a Kulturkampf divested
themselves of the world view and the mores handed
down from their ancestors. They are confirmed in this
error by the socialist doctrine, which also fails to rec-
ognize that the material and technological achieve-
ments of the West were brought about by the philoso-
phies of rationalism, individualism, and utilitarianism
and are bound to disappear if the collectivist and total-
itarian tenets substitute socialism for capitalism.

Whatever people may say about Western civilization,
the fact remains that all peoples look with envy upon its
achievements, want to reproduce them, and thereby
implicitly admit its superiority. It is this state of affairs
that has generated the modern doctrine of race differ-
ences and its political offshoot, racism.

The doctrine of race differences maintains that some
races have succeeded better than others in the pursuit
of those aims that are common to all men. All men want
to resist the operation of the factors detrimental to the
preservation of their lives, their health, and their well-
being. It cannot be denied that modern Western capi-
talism has succeeded best in these endeavors. It has
increased the average length of life and raised the av-
erage standard of living unprecedentedly. It has made

334 THE COURSE OF HISTORY

accessible to the common man those higher human ac-
complishments — philosophy, science, art — which in the
past were everywhere, and today outside the countries
of Western capitalism still are, accessible only to a small
minority. Grumblers may blame Western civilization
for its materialism and may assert that it gratified no-
body but a small class of rugged exploiters. But their
laments cannot wipe out the facts. Millions of mothers
have been made happier by the drop in infant mortality.
Famines have disappeared and epidemics have been
curbed. The average man lives in more satisfactory con-
ditions than his ancestors or his fellows in the noncapi-
talistic countries. And one must not dismiss as merely
materialistic a civilization which makes it possible for
practically everybody to enjoy a Beethoven symphony
performed by an orchestra conducted by an eminent
master.

The thesis that some races have been more successful
than others in their efforts to develop a civilization is
unassailable as a statement about historical experience.
As a resume of what has happened in the past it is quite
correct to assert that modern civilization is the white
man's achievement. However, the establishment of this
fact justifies neither the white man's racial self-conceit
nor the political doctrines of racism.

Many people take pride in the fact that their ances-
tors or their relatives have performed great things. It
gives some men a special satisfaction to know that they
belong to a family, clan, nation, or race that has dis-
tinguished itself in the past. But this innocuous vanity
easily turns into scorn of those who do not belong to

INTERPRETATIONS OF HISTORY 335

the same distinguished group and into attempts to
humiliate and to insult them. The diplomats, soldiers,
bureaucrats, and businessmen of the Western nations
who in their contacts with the colored races have dis-
played overbearing effrontery had no claim at all to
boast of the deeds of Western civilization. They were
not the makers of this culture which they compromised
by their behavior. Their insolence which found its ex-
pression in such signs as "Entrance forbidden to dogs
and natives" has poisoned the relations between the
races for ages to come. But we do not have to deal with
these sad facts in an analysis of racial doctrines.

Historical experience warrants the statement that in
the past the efforts of some subdivisions of the Cauca-
sian race to develop a civilization have eclipsed those
of the members of other races. It does not warrant any
statement about the future. It does not permit us to as-
sume that this superiority of the white stock will persist
in the future. Nothing can be predicted from historical
experience with a likelihood that can be compared with
the probability of predictions made in the natural sci-
ences on the basis of facts established by laboratory
experiments. In 1760 a historian would have been right
in declaring that Western civilization was mainly an
achievement of the Latins and the British and that the
Germans had contributed little to it. It was permissible
at that time to maintain that German science, art, litera-
ture, philosophy, and technology were insignificant
compared to the accomplishments of the members of
some other nations. One could fairly contend that those
Germans who had distinguished themselves in these

336 THE COURSE OF HISTORY

fields — foremost among them the astronomers Coper-
nicus 1 and Kepler and the philosopher Leibniz — could
succeed only because they had fully absorbed what
non-Germans had contributed, that intellectually they
did not belong to Germany, that for a long time they
had no German followers, and that those who first appre-
ciated their doctrines were predominantly non-German.
But if somebody had inferred from these facts that the
Germans are culturally inferior and would rank in the
future far below the French and the British, his conclu-
sion would have been disproved by the course of later
history.

A prediction about the future behavior of those races
which today are considered culturally backward could
only be made by biological science. If biology were to
discover some anatomical characteristics of the mem-
bers of the non-Caucasian races which necessarily curb
their mental faculties, one could venture such a predic-
tion. But so far biology has not discovered any such
characteristics.

It is not the task of this essay to deal with the bio-
logical issues of the racial doctrine. It must therefore
abstain from analysis of the controversial problems of
racial purity and miscegenation. Nor is it our task to
investigate the merits of the political program of racism.
This is for praxeology and economics.

All that can be said about racial issues on the ground
of historical experience boils down to two statements.
First, the prevailing differences between the various

1. We need not go into the question whether Copernicus was a
German or a Pole. See Mises, Omnipotent Government, p. 15.

INTERPRETATIONS OF HISTORY 337

biological strains of men are reflected in the civiliza-
tory achievements of the group members. Second, in
our age the main achievements in civilization of some
subdivisions of the white Caucasian race are viewed by
the immense majority of the members of all other races
as more desirable than characteristic features of the
civilization produced by the members of their respec-
tive own races.

5. The Secularism of Western Civilization

An almost universally accepted interpretation of
modern civilization distinguishes between the spiritual
and material aspects. The distinction is suspect, as it
originated not from a dispassionate observation of facts
but from resentment. Every race, nation, or linguistic
group boasts of its members' achievements in spiritual
matters even while admitting its backwardness in ma-
terial matters. It is assumed that there is little connec-
tion between the two aspects of civilization, that the
spiritual is more sublime, deserving, and praiseworthy
than the "merely" material, and that preoccupation
with material improvement prevents a people from be-
stowing sufficient attention on spiritual matters.

Such were in the nineteenth century the ideas of the
leaders of the Eastern peoples who were eager to re-
produce in their own countries the achievements of the
West. The study of Western civilization made them
subconsciously despise the institutions and ideologies of
their native countries and left them feeling inferior.
They re-established their mental equilibrium by means

338 THE COURSE OF HISTORY

of the doctrine that depreciated Western civilization as
merely materialistic. The Rumanians or Turks who
longed for railroads and factories to be built by West-
ern capital consoled themselves by exalting the spir-
itual culture of their own nations. The Hindus and the
Chinese were of course on firmer ground when referring
to the literature and art of their ancestors. But it seems
not to have occurred to them that many hundreds of
years separated them from the generations that had
excelled in philosophy and poetry, and that in the age
of these famous ancestors their nations were, if not
ahead of, certainly not second in material civilization to
any of their contemporaries.

In recent decades the doctrine that belittles modern
Western civilization as merely materialistic has been
almost universally endorsed by the nations which
brought about this civilization. It comforts Europeans
when they compare the economic prosperity of the
United States with present-day conditions in their own
countries. It serves the American socialists as a leading
argument in their endeavor to depict American capital-
ism as a curse of mankind. Reluctantly forced to admit
that capitalism pours a horn of plenty upon people and
that the Marxian prediction of the masses' progressive
impoverishment has been spectacularly disproved by
the facts, they try to salvage their detraction of capital-
ism by describing contemporary civilization as merely
materialistic and sham.

Bitter attacks upon modern civilization are launched
by writers who think that they are pleading the cause
of religion. They reprimand our age for its secularism.

INTERPRETATIONS OF HISTORY 339

They bemoan the passing of a way of life in which, they
would have us believe, people were not preoccupied
with the pursuit of earthly ambitions but were first of
all concerned about the strict observance of their reli-
gious duties. They ascribe all evils to the spread of
skepticism and agnosticism and passionately advocate a
return to the orthodoxy of ages gone by.

It is hard to find a doctrine which distorts history
more radically than this antisecularism. There have al-
ways been devout men, pure in heart and dedicated to
a pious life. But the religiousness of these sincere be-
lievers had nothing in common with the established
system of devotion. It is a myth that the political and
social institutions of the ages preceding modern individ-
ualistic philosophy and modem capitalism were imbued
with a genuine Christian spirit. The teachings of the
Gospels did not determine the official attitude of the
governments toward religion. It was, on the contrary,
this-worldly concerns of the secular rulers — absolute
kings and aristocratic oligarchies, but occasionally also
revolting peasants and urban mobs — that transformed
religion into an instrument of profane political ambi-
tions.

Nothing could be less compatible with true religion
than the ruthless persecution of dissenters and the hor-
rors of religious crusades and wars. No historian ever
denied that very little of the spirit of Christ was to be
found in the churches of the sixteenth century which
were criticized by the theologians of the Reformation
and in those of the eighteenth century which the phi-
losophers of the Enlightenment attacked.

340 THE COURSE OF HISTORY

The ideology of individualism and utilitarianism
which inaugurated modern capitalism brought freedom
also to the religious longings of man. It shattered the
pretension of those in power to impose their own creed
upon their subjects. Religion is no longer the observ-
ance of articles enforced by constables and execution-
ers. It is what a man, guided by his conscience, spon-
taneously espouses as his own faith. Modern Western
civilization is this-worldly. But it was precisely its
secularism, its religious indifference, that gave rein to
the renascence of genuine religious feeling. Those who
worship today in a free country are not driven by the
secular arm but by their conscience. In complying with
the precepts of their persuasion, they are not intent
upon avoiding punishment on the part of the earthly
authorities but upon salvation and peace of mind.

6. The Rejection of Capitalism by Antisecularism

The hostility displayed by the champions of anti-
secularism to modern ways of life manifests itself in
the condemnation of capitalism as an unjust system.

In the opinion of the socialists as well as of the inter-
ventionists the market economy impedes the full utiliza-
tion of the achievements of technology and thus checks
the evolution of production and restricts the quantity
of goods produced and available for consumption. In
earlier days these critics of capitalism did not deny
that an equal distribution of the social product among
all would hardly bring about a noticeable improvement
in the material conditions of the immense majority of

INTERPRETATIONS OF HISTORY 341

people. In their plans equal distribution played a sub-
ordinate role. Prosperity and abundance for all which
they promised was, as they thought, to be expected
from the freeing of the productive forces from the fet-
ters allegedly imposed upon them by the selfishness of
the capitalists. The purpose of the reforms they sug-
gested was to replace capitalism by a more efficient
system of production and thereby to inaugurate an age
of riches for all.

Now that economic analysis has exposed the illusions
and fallacies in the socialists' and interventionists' con-
demnation of capitalism, they try to salvage their pro-
grams by resorting to another method. The Marxians
have developed the doctrine of the inevitability of so-
cialism, and the interventionists, following in their wake,
speak of the irreversibility of the trend toward more
and more government interference with economic af-
fairs. It is obvious that these makeshifts are designed
merely to cover their intellectual defeat and to divert
the public's attention from the disastrous consequences
of the socialist and interventionist policies.

Similar motives prompt those who advocate socialism
and interventionism for moral and religious reasons.
They consider it supererogatory to examine the eco-
nomic problems involved, and they try to shift the
discussion of the pros and cons of the market economy
from the field of economic analysis to what they call
a higher sphere. They reject capitalism as an unfair
system and advocate either socialism or interventionism
as being in accord with their moral or religious princi-
ples. It is vile, they say, to look upon human affairs

342 THE COURSE OF HISTORY

from the point of view of productivity, profits and a
materialistic concern about wealth and a plentiful sup-
ply of material goods. Man ought to strive after justice,
not wealth.

This mode of argumentation would be consistent if
it were openly to ascribe inherent moral value to pov-
erty and to condemn altogether any effort to raise the
standard of living above the level of mere subsistence.
Science could not object to such a judgment of value,
since judgments of value are ultimate choices on the
part of the individual who utters them.

However, those rejecting capitalism from a moral
and religious point of view do not prefer penury to
well-being. On the contrary, they tell their flock they
want to improve man's material well-being. They see it
as capitalism's chief weakness that it does not provide
the masses with that degree of well-being which, as
they believe, socialism or interventionism could provide.
Their condemnation of capitalism and their recommen-
dation of social reforms imply the thesis that socialism
or interventionism will raise, not lower, the standard of
living of the common man. Thus these critics of capi-
talism endorse altogether the teachings of the socialists
and interventionists without bothering to scrutinize
what the economists have brought forward to discredit
them. The only fault they find with the tenets of the
Marxian socialists and the secular parties of interven-
tionism is their commitment to atheism or secularism.

It is obvious that the question whether material well-
being is best served by capitalism, socialism, or inter-

INTERPRETATIONS OF HISTORY 343

ventionism can be decided only by careful analysis of
the operation of each of these systems. This is what
economics is accomplishing. There is no point in deal-
ing with these issues without taking full account of all
that economics has to say about them.

It is justifiable if ethics and religion tell people that
they ought to make better use of the well-being that
capitalism brings them; if they try to induce the faith-
ful to substitute better ways of spending for the objec-
tionable habits of feasting, drinking, and gambling; if
they condemn lying and cheating and praise the moral
values implied in purity of family relations and in
charity to those in need. But it is irresponsible to con-
demn one social system and to recommend its replace-
ment by another system without having fully investi-
gated the economic consequences of each.

There is nothing in any ethical doctrine or in the
teachings of any of the creeds based on the Ten Com-
mandments that could justify the condemnation of an
economic system which has multiplied the population
and provides the masses in the capitalistic countries
with the highest standard of living ever attained in his-
tory. From the religious point of view, too, the drop in
infant mortality, the prolongation of the average length
of life, the successful fight against plagues and disease,
the disappearance of famines, illiteracy, and supersti-
tion tell in favor of capitalism. The churches are right
to lament the destitution of the masses in the economi-
cally backward countries. But they are badly mistaken
when they assume that anything can wipe out the

344 THE COURSE OF HISTORY

poverty of these wretched people but unconditional
adoption of the system of profit-seeking big business,
that is, mass production for the satisfaction of the needs
of the many.

A conscientious moralist or churchman would not
consider meddling in controversies concerning tech-
nological or therapeutical methods without having suf-
ficiently familiarized himself with all the physical,
chemical and physiological problems involved. Yet
many of them think that ignorance of economics is no
bar to handling economic issues. They even take pride
in their ignorance. They hold that problems of the eco-
nomic organization of society are to be considered ex-
clusively from the point of view of a preconceived idea
of justice and without taking account of what they call
the shabby materialistic concern for a comfortable life.
They recommend some policies, reject others, and do
not bother about the effects that must result from the
adoption of their suggestions.

This neglect of the effects of policies, whether re-
jected or recommended, is absurd. For the moralists
and the Christian proponents of anticapitalism do not
concern themselves with the economic organization of
society from sheer caprice. They seek reform of existing
conditions because they want to bring about definite
effects. What they call the injustice of capitalism is
the alleged fact that it causes widespread poverty and
destitution. They advocate reforms which, as they ex-
pect, will wipe out poverty and destitution. They are
therefore, from the point of view of their own valua-
tions and the ends they themselves are eager to attain,

INTERPRETATIONS OF HISTORY 345

inconsistent in referring merely to something which
they call the higher standard of justice and morality
and ignoring the economic analysis of both capitalism
and the anticapitalistic policies. Their terming capital-
ism unjust and anticapitalistic measures just is quite
arbitrary since it has no relation to the effect of each
of these sets of economic policies.

The truth is that those fighting capitalism as a sys-
tem contrary to the principles of morals and religion
have uncritically and lightheartedly adopted all the
economic teachings of the socialists and communists.
Like the Maxians, they ascribe all ills— economic crises,
unemployment, poverty, crime, and many other evils
— to the operation of capitalism, and everything that
is satisfactory — the higher standard of living in the
capitalistic countries, the progress of technology, the
drop in mortality rates, and so on — to the operation of
government and of the labor unions. They have un-
wittingly espoused all the tenets of Marxism minus its
— merely incidental — atheism. This surrender of phil-
osophical ethics and of religion to the anticapitalistic
teachings is the greatest triumph of socialist and inter-
ventionist propaganda. It is bound to degrade philo-
sophical ethics and religion to mere auxiliaries of the
forces seeking the destruction of Western civilization.
In calling capitalism unjust and declaring that its aboli-
tion will establish justice, moralists and churchmen ren-
der a priceless service to the cause of the socialists and
interventionists and relieve them of their greatest em-
barrassment, the impossibility of refuting the econo-
mists' criticism of their plans by discursive reasoning.

346 THE COURSE OF HISTORY

It must be reiterated that no reasoning founded on
the principles of philosophical ethics or of the Christian
creed can reject as fundamentally unjust an economic
system that succeeds in improving the material condi-
tions of all people, and assign the epithet "just" to a
system that tends to spread poverty and starvation. The
evaluation of any economic system must be made by
careful analysis of its effects upon the welfare of peo-
ple, not by an appeal to an arbitrary concept of justice
which neglects to take these effects into full account.

Chapter 16. Present-Day Trends and the Future

1. The Reversal of the Trend toward Freedom

From the seventeenth century on, philosophers
in dealing with the essential content of history began to
stress the problems of liberty and bondage. Their con-
cepts of both were rather vague, borrowed from the
political philosophy of ancient Greece and influenced by
the prevailing interpretation of the conditions of the
Germanic tribes whose invasions had destroyed Rome's
Western empire. As these thinkers saw it, freedom was
the original state of mankind and the rule of kings
emerged only in the course of later history. In the scrip-
tural relation of the inauguration of the kingship of Saul
they found confirmation of their doctrine as well as a
rather unsympathetic description of the characteristic
marks of royal government. 1 Historical evolution, they
concluded, had deprived man of his inalienable right of
freedom.

The philosophers of the Enlightenment were almost
unanimous in rejecting the claims of hereditary royalty
and in recommending the republican form of govern-
ment. The royal police forced them to be cautious in the
expression of their ideas, but the public could read be-
tween the lines. On the eve of the American and the
French revolutions monarchy had lost its age-old hold

1. I Samuel 8; 11-18.

347

348 THE COURSE OF HISTORY

on men's minds. The enormous prestige enjoyed by
England, then the world's richest and most powerful
nation, suggested the compromise between the two in-
compatible principles of government which had worked
rather satisfactorily in the United Kingdom. But the old
indigenous dynasties of continental Europe were not
prepared to acquiesce in their reduction to a merely
ceremonial position such as the alien dynasty of Great
Britain had finally accepted, though only after some
resistance. They lost their crowns because they dis-
dained the role of what the Count of Chambord had
called "the legitimate king of the revolution."

In the heyday of liberalism the opinion prevailed
that the trend toward government by the people is irre-
sistible. Even the conservatives who advocated a return
to monarchical absolutism, status privileges for the
nobility, and censorship were more or less convinced
that they were fighting for a lost cause. Hegel, the cham-
pion of Prussian absolutism, found it convenient to pay
lip service to the universally accepted philosophical
doctrine in defining history as "progress in the con-
sciousness of freedom."

But then arose a new generation that rejected all the
ideals of the liberal movement without, like Hegel, con-
cealing their true intentions behind a hypocritical rever-
ence for the word freedom. In spite of his sympathies
with the tenets of these self-styled social reformers, John
Stuart Mill could not help branding their projects — and
especially those of Auguste Comte — liberticide. 2 In the

2. Letter to Harriet Mill, Jan. 15, 1855. F. A. Hayek, John Stuart
Mill and Harriet Taylor (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1951),
p. 216.

PRESENT-DAY TRENDS AND THE FUTURE 349

eyes of these new radicals the most depraved enemies of
mankind were not the despots but the "bourgeois"
who had evicted them. The bourgeoisie, they said, had
deceived the people by proclaiming sham slogans of
liberty, equality under the law, and representative gov-
ernment. What the bourgeois were really intent upon
was reckless exploitation of the immense majority of
honest men. Democracy was in fact plutodemocracy, a
blind to disguise the unlimited dictatorship of the capi-
talists. What the masses needed was not freedom and
a share in the administration of government affairs but
the omnipotence of the "true friends" of the people, of
the "vanguard" of the proletariat or of the charismatic
Fuhrer. No reader of the books and pamphlets of revolu-
tionary socialism could fail to realize that their authors
sought not freedom but unlimited totalitarian despotism.
But so long as the socialists had not yet seized power,
they badly needed for their propaganda the institutions
and the bills of rights of "plutocratic" liberalism. As an
opposition party they could not do without the publicity
the parliamentary forum offered them, nor without free-
dom of speech, conscience, and the press. Thus willy-
nilly they had to include temporarily in their program
the liberties and civil rights which they were firmly
resolved to abolish as soon as they seized power. For,
as Bukharin declared after the conquest of Russia by
the Bolshevists, it would have been ridiculous to demand
from the capitalists liberty for the workers' movement
in any other way than by demanding liberty for all.*

3. Bukharin, Programme of the Communists (Bolsheviks), ed.
by the Group of English Speaking Communists in Russia (1919),
pp. 28-9.

350 THE COURSE OF HISTORY

In the first years of their regime the Soviets did not
bother to conceal their abhorrence of popular govern-
ment and civil liberties, and openly praised their dicta-
torial methods. But in the later thirties they realized
that an undisguised antifreedom program was unpop-
ular in Western Europe and North America. As, fright-
ened by German rearmament, they wanted to establish
friendly relations with the West, they suddenly changed
their attitude toward the terms (not the ideas) of
democracy, constitutional government, and civil liber-
ties. They proclaimed the slogan of the "popular front"
and entered into alliance with the rival socialist factions
which up to that moment they had branded social
traitors. Russia got a constitution, which all over the
world was praised by servile scribblers as the most per-
fect document in history in spite of its being based on
the one-party principle, the negation of all civic liberties.
From that time on the most barbaric and despotic of
governments began to claim for itself the appellation
"people's democracy."

The history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
has discredited the hopes and the prognostications of
the philosophers of the Enlightenment. The peoples did
not proceed on the road toward freedom, constitutional
government, civil rights, free trade, peace, and good
will among nations. Instead the trend is toward totali-
tarianism, toward socialism. And once more there are
people who assert that this trend is the ultimate phase
of history and that it will never give way to another
trend.

PBESENT-DAY TRENDS AND THE FUTURE 351

2. The Rise of the Ideology of Equality
in Wealth and Income

From time immemorial the living philosophy of the
plain man has unquestioningly accepted the fact of
status differences as well as the necessity of subordina-
tion to those in power. Man's primary need is protection
against malicious onslaughts on the part of other men
and groups of men. Only when safe from hostile attacks
can he gather food, build a home, rear a family, in short,
survive. Life is the first of all goods, and no price to be
paid for its preservation appeared too high to people
harassed by predatory raids. To remain alive as a slave,
they thought, is still better than to be killed. Lucky are
those who enjoy the patronage of a benevolent master,
but even a harsh overlord is to be preferred to no pro-
tection at all. Men are born unequal. Some are stronger
and smarter, some are weaker and clumsier. The latter
had no choice but to surrender to the former and link
their own destiny with that of a mighty suzerain. God,
declared the priests, ordained it this way.

This was the ideology that animated the social organi-
zation which Ferguson, Saint-Simon, and Herbert Spen-
cer called militaristic and which present-day American
writers call feudal. Its prestige began to decline when
the warriors who fought the warlord's battles became
aware that the preservation of their chieftain's power
depended on their own gallantry and, made self-reliant
by this insight, asked a share in the conduct of the affairs
of state. The conflicts resulting from this claim of the

352 THE COURSE OF HISTORY

aristocrats engendered ideas which were bound to ques-
tion and finally to demolish the doctrine of the social
necessity of status and caste distinctions. Why, asked
the commoners, should the noblemen enjoy privileges
and rights that are denied to us? Does not the flowering
of the commonwealth depend on our toil and trouble?
Do the affairs of state concern only the king and the
barons and not the great majority of us? We pay the
taxes and our sons bleed on the battlefields, but we have
no voice in the councils in which the king and the repre-
sentatives of the nobility determine our fate.

No tenable argument could be opposed to these pre-
tensions of the tiers etat. It was anachronistic to preserve
status privileges that had originated from a type of mili-
tary organization which had long since been abandoned.
The discrimination practiced against commoners by the
princely courts and "good society" was merely a nui-
sance. But the disdainful treatment, in the armies and
in the diplomatic and civil service, of those who were
not of noble extraction caused disasters. Led by aristo-
cratic nincompoops, the French royal armies were
routed; yet there were many commoners in France
who later proved their brilliancy in the armies of the
Revolution and the Empire. England's diplomatic, mili-
tary, and naval accomplishments were evidently due in
part to the fact that it had opened virtually all careers
to every citizen. The demolition of the Bastille and the
abolition of the privileges of the French nobility were
hailed all over the world by the elite, in Germany by
Kant, Goethe, and Schiller, among others. In imperial
Vienna Beethoven wrote a symphony to honor the com-

PRESENT-DAY TRENDS AND THE FUTURE 353

mander of the armies of the Revolution who had de-
feated the Austrian forces, and was deeply grieved when
the news came that his hero had overthrown the repub-
lican form of government. The principles of freedom,
equality of all men under the law, and constitutional
government were with little opposition approved by
public opinion in all Western countries. Guided by these
principles, it was held, mankind was marching forward
into a new age of justice and prosperity.

However, there was no unanimity in the interpreta-
tion of the concept of equality. For all of its champions
it meant the abolition of status and caste privileges and
the legal disabilities of the "lower" strata, and especially
of slavery and serfdom. But there were some who advo-
cated the leveling of differences in wealth and income.

To understand the origin and the power of this egali-
tarian ideology one must realize that is was stimulated
by the resumption of an idea which for thousands of
years all over the world had inspired reform movements
as well as the merely academic writings of Utopian
authors: the idea of equal ownership of land. All the
evils that plagued mankind were ascribed to the fact
that some people had appropriated more land than they
needed for the support of their families. The corollary
of the abundance of the lord of the manor was the
penury of the landless. This iniquity was seen as the
cause of crime, robbery, conflict, and bloodshed. All
these mischiefs would disappear in a society consisting
exclusively of farmers who could produce in their own
household what they needed for the support of their
families, and neither more nor less. In such a common-

354 THE COURSE OF HISTORY

wealth there would be no temptations. Neither indi-
viduals nor nations would covet what by rights belongs
to others. There would be neither tyrants nor con-
querors, for neither aggression nor conquest would pay.
There would be eternal peace.

Equal distribution of land was the program that
prompted the Gracchi in ancient Rome, the peasant
revolts which again and again disturbed all European
countries, the agrarian reforms aimed at by various
Protestant sects and by the Jesuits in the organization
of their famous Indian community in what is now Para-
guay. The fascination of this utopia enticed many of the
most noble minds, among them Thomas Jefferson. It
influenced the program of the Social Revolutionaries,
the party which recruited the immense majority of the
people in Imperial Russia. It is the program today of
hundreds of millions in Asia, Africa, and Latin America
whose endeavors meet, paradoxically enough, with the
support of the foreign policy of the United States.

Yet, the idea of equal distribution of land is a perni-
cious illusion. Its execution would plunge mankind into
misery and starvation, and would in fact wipe out civili-
zation itself.

There is no room in the context of this program for
any kind of division of labor but regional specialization
according to the particular geographical conditions of
the various territories. The scheme, when consistently
carried to its ultimate consequences, does not even pro-
vide for doctors and blacksmiths. It fails to take into
account the fact that the present state of the produc-
tivity of land in the economically advanced countries

PRESENT-DAY TRENDS AND THE FUTURE 355

is a result of the division of labor which supplies tools
and machines, fertilizer, electric current, gasoline, and
many other things that multiply the quantity and im-
prove the quality of the produce. Under the system of
the division of labor the farmer does not grow what he
can make direct use of for himself and his family, but
concentrates upon those crops for which his piece of
soil offers comparatively the most favorable opportu-
nities. He sells the produce on the market and buys on
the market what he and his family need. The optimum
size of a farm no longer has any relation to the size of
the farmer's family. It is determined by technological
considerations: the highest possible output per unit of
input. Like other entrepreneurs the farmer produces for
profit, i.e., he grows what is most urgently needed by
every member of society for his use, and not what he and
his family alone can directly use for their own consump-
tion. But those who desire equal distribution of land
stubbornly refuse to take notice of all these results of an
evolution of many thousands of years, and dream of re-
turning land utilization to a state long ago rendered
obsolete. They would undo the whole of economic his-
tory, regardless of consequences. They disregard the
fact that under the primitive methods of land tenure
which they recommend our globe could not support
more than a fraction of the population now inhabiting
it, and even this fraction only at a much lower standard
of living.

It is understandable that ignorant paupers in back-
ward countries cannot think of any other way for the
improvement of their conditions than the acquisition of

356 THE COURSE OF HISTORY

a piece of land. But it is unpardonable that they are
confirmed in their illusions by representatives of ad-
vanced nations who call themselves experts and should
know very well what state of agriculture is required to
make a people prosperous. The poverty of the backward
countries can be eradicated only by industrialization and
its agricultural corollary, the replacement of land utili-
zation for the direct benefit of the farmer's household
by land utilization to supply the market.

The sympathetic support with which schemes for
land distribution meet today and have met in the past
from people enjoying all the advantages of life under
the division of labor has never been based in any realis-
tic regard for the inexorable nature-given state of affairs.
It is rather the outcome of romantic illusions. The cor-
rupt society of decaying Rome, deprived of any share in
the conduct of public affairs, bored and frustrated, fell
into reveries about the imagined happiness of the simple
life of self-sufficient farmers and shepherds. The still
more idle, corrupt, and bored aristocrats of the ancien
regime in France found pleasure in a pastime they chose
to call dairy farming. Present-day American millionaires
pursue farming as a hobby which has the added advan-
tage that its costs reduce the amount of income tax due.
These people look upon farming less as a branch of
production than as a distraction.

A seemingly plausible plea for expropriation of the
landholdings of the aristocracy could be made out at
the time the civil privileges of the nobility were revoked.
Feudal estates were princely gifts to the ancestors of
the aristocratic owners in compensation for military

PRESENT-DAY TRENDS AND THE FUTURE 357

services rendered in the past and to be rendered in the
future. They provided the means to support the king's
armed retinue, and the size of the holding allotted to
the individual liegeman was determined by his rank
and position in the forces. But as military conditions
changed and the armies were no longer composed of
vassals called up, the prevailing system of land distribu-
tion became anachronistic. There seemed to be no rea-
son to let the squires keep revenues accorded as com-
pensation for services they no longer rendered. It
seemed justifiable to take back the fiefs.

Such arguments could not be refuted form the point
of view of the doctrine to which the aristocrats them-
selves resorted in defense of their status privileges. They
stood on their traditional rights, pointing to the value
of the services their forbears had rendered to the nation.
But as it was obvious that they themselves no longer
rendered such indispensable services, it was correct to
infer that all the benefits received as reward for these
services should be canceled. This included revocation
of the land grants.

From the point of view of the liberal economists,
however, such confiscation appeared an unnecessary
and dangerous disruption of the continuity of economic
evolution. What was needed was the abolition of all
those legal institutions that sheltered the inefficient
proprietor against the competition of more efficient
people who could utilize the soil to produce better and
more cheaply. The laws that withdrew the estates of
the noblemen from the market and the supremacy of the
consumers — such as entails and the legal inability of

358 THE COURSE OF HISTORY

commoners to acquire ownership by purchase — must
be repealed. Then the supremacy of the market would
shift control of land into the hands of those who know
how to supply the consumers in the most efficient way
with what they ask for most urgently.

Unimpressed by the dreams of the Utopians, the econ-
omists looked upon the soil as a factor of production.
The rightly understood interests of all the people de-
manded that the soil, like all other material factors of
production, should be controlled by the most efficient
entrepreneurs. The economists had no arbitrary prefer-
ence for any special size of the farms: that size was
best which secured the most efficient utilization. They
did not let themselves be fooled by the myth that it was
in the interest of the nation to have as many of its mem-
bers as possible employed in agriculture. On the con-
trary, they were fully aware that is was beneficial not
only to the rest of the nation but also to those employed
in agriculture if waste of manpower was avoided in this
as in all other branches of production. The increase in
material well-being was due to the fact that, thanks to
technological progress, a continually shrinking percent-
age of the whole population was sufficient to turn out
all the farm products needed. Attempts to meddle with
this secular evolution which more and more reduced
the ratio of the farm population as against the nonfarm
population were bound to lower the average standard
of living. Mankind is the more prosperous the smaller
the percentage of its total numbers employed in produc-
ing all the quantities of food and raw materials required.
If any sense can be attached to the term "reactionary,"

PRESENT-DAY TRENDS AND THE FUTURE 359

then the endeavors to preserve by special measures those
small-size farms which cannot hold their own in the
competition of the market are certainly to be called
reactionary. They tend to substitute a lower degree of
the division of labor for a higher degree and thus slow
down or entirely stop economic improvement. Let the
consumers determine what size of farm best suits their
interests.

The economists' critique of the agrarian utopia was
highly unpopular. Nevertheless the weight of their argu-
ments succeeded for a time in checking the zeal of the
reformers. Only after the end of the first World War
did the ideal of an agriculture predominantly or even
exclusively operated by small fanners again attain the
role it plays today in world politics.

The great historical and political importance of the
idea of equal distribution of land is to be seen in the
fact that it paved the way for the acceptance of social-
ism and communism. The Marxian socialists were aca-
demically opposed to it and advocated the nationaliza-
tion of agriculture. But they used the slogan "equal dis-
tribution of land ownership" as a lever to incite the
masses in the economically underdeveloped countries.
For the illiterate rural population of these nations the
nostrum "socialization of business" was meaningless. But
all their instincts of envy and hatred were aroused when
politicians promised them the land of the kulaks and the
owners of big estates. When during F. D. Roosevelt's
administration pro-communists in the United States gov-
ernment and the American press asserted that the Chi-
nese "leftists" were not communists but "merely agrar-

360 THE COUBSE OF HISTORY

ian reformers," they were right insofar as the Chinese
agents of the Soviets had adopted Lenin's clever trick
of inaugurating the socialist revolution by resorting to
the most popular slogans and concealing one's own real
intentions. Today we see how in aH economically under-
developed countries the scheme of land confiscation and
redistribution makes the most effective propaganda for
the Soviets.

The scheme is manifestly inapplicable to the countries
of Western civilization. The urban population of an
industrialized nation cannot be lured by the prospect of
such an agrarian reform. Its sinister effect upon the
thinking of the masses in the capitalistic countries con-
sists in its rendering sympathetic the program of wealth
and income equality. It thus makes popular interven-
tionist policies which must inevitably lead to full social-
ism. To stress this fact does not mean that any socialist
or communist regime would ever really bring about
equalization of income. It is merely to point out that
what makes socialism and communism popular is not
only the illusory belief that they will give enormous
riches to everybody but the no less illusory expectation
that nobody will get more than anybody else. Envy is
of course one of the deepest human emotions.

The American "progressives" who are stirring up their
countrymen as well as all foreigners to envy and hatred
and are vehemently asking for the equalization of wealth
and incomes do not see how these ideas are interpreted
by the rest of the world. Foreign nations look upon all
Americans, including the workers, with the same jeal-
ousy and hostility with which the typical American

PRESENT-DAY TRENDS AND THE FUTURE 361

union member looks upon those whose income exceeds
his own. In the eyes of foreigners, the American tax-
payers have been motivated merely by bad conscience
and fear when they spent billions to improve conditions
abroad. Public opinion in Asia, Africa, Latin America,
and many European countries views this system of
foreign aid as socialist agitators do money laid out by
the rich for charity: a pittance meant to bribe the poor
and prevent them from taking what by rights belongs
to them. Statesmen and writers who recommend that
their nations should side with the United States against
Russia are no less unpopular with their countrymen
than those few Americans who have the courage to
speak for capitalism and to reject socialism are with
their fellow citizens. In Gerhard Hauptmann's play Die
Weber, one of the most effective pieces of German anti-
capitalistic literature, the wife of a businessman is
startled when she realizes that people behave as if it
were a crime to be rich. Except for an insignificant
minority, everyone today is prepared to take this con-
demnation of wealth for granted. This mentality spells
the doom of American foreign policy. The United States
is condemned and hated because it is prosperous.

The almost uncontested triumph of the egalitarian
ideology has entirely obliterated all other political
ideals. The envy-driven masses do not care a whit for
what the demagogues call the "bourgeois" concern for
freedom of conscience, of thought, of the press, for
habeas corpus, trial by jury, and all the rest. They long
for the earthly paradise which the socialist leaders
promise them. Like these leaders, they are convinced

362 THE COURSE OF HISTORY

that the 'liquidation of the bourgeois" will bring them
back into the Garden of Eden. The irony is that nowa-
days they are calling this program the liberal program.

3. The Chimera of a Perfect State of Mankind

All doctrines that have sought to discover in the
course of human history some definite trend in the se-
quence of changes have disagreed, in reference to the
past, with the historically established facts, and where
they tried to predict the future have been spectacularly
proved wrong by later events.

Most of these doctrines were characterized by refer-
ence to a state of perfection in human affairs. They
placed this perfect state either at the beginning of his-
tory or at its end or at both its beginning and its end.
Consequently, history appeared in their interpretation
as a progressive deterioration or a progressive improve-
ment or as a period of progressive deterioration to be
followed by one of progressive improvement. With some
of these doctrines the idea of a perfect state was rooted
in religious beliefs and dogmas. However, it is not the
task of secular science to enter into an analysis of these
theological aspects of the matter.

It is obvious that in a perfect state of human affairs
there cannot be any history. History is the record of
changes. But the very concept of perfection implies the
absence of any change, as a perfect state can only be
transformed into a less perfect state, i.e., can only be
impaired by any alteration. If one places the state of
perfection only at the supposed beginning of history,

PBESENT-DAY TRENDS AND THE FUTURE 363

one asserts that the age of history was preceded by an
age in which there was no history and that one day some
events which disturbed the perfection of this original
age inaugurated the age of history. If one assumes that
history tends toward the realization of a perfect state,
one asserts that history will one day come to an end.

It is man's nature to strive ceaselessly after the sub-
stitution of more satisfactory conditions for less satis-
factory. This motive stimulates his mental energies and
prompts him to act. Life in a perfect frame would re-
duce man to a purely vegetative existence.

History did not begin with a golden age. The condi-
tions under which primitive man lived appear in the
eyes of later ages rather unsatisfactory. He was sur-
rounded by innumerable dangers that do not threaten
civilized man at all, or at least not to the same degree.
Compared with later generations, he was extremely poor
and barbaric. He would have been delighted if opportu-
nity had been given to him to take advantage of any of
the achievements of our age, as for instance the methods
of healing wounds.

Neither can mankind ever reach a state of perfec-
tion. The idea that a state of aimlessness and indiffer-
ence is desirable and the most happy condition that
mankind could ever attain permeates Utopian literature.
The authors of these plans depict a society in which no
further changes are required because everything has
reached the best possible form. In Utopia there will no
longer be any reason to strive for improvement because
everything is already perfect, History has been brought
to a close. Henceforth all people will be thoroughly

364 THE COURSE OF HISTORY

happy. 1 It never occurred to one of these writers that
those whom they were eager to benefit by the reform
might have different opinions about what is desirable
and what not.

A new sophisticated version of the image of the per-
fect society has arisen lately out of a crass misinterpre-
tation of the procedure of economics. In order to deal
with the effects of changes in the market situation, the
endeavors to adjust production to these changes, and

1. In this sense Karl Marx too must be called a Utopian. He too
aimed at a state of affairs in which history will come to a standstill.
For history is, in the scheme of Marx, the history of class struggles.
Once classes and the class struggle are abolished, there can no longer
be any history. It is true, that the Communist Manifesto merely
declares that the history of all hitherto existing society, or, as Engels
later added, more precisely, the history after the dissolution of the
golden age of primeval communism, is the history of class struggles
and thus does not exclude the interpretation that after the establish-
ment of the socialist millennium some new content of history could
emerge. But the other writings of Marx, Engels, and their disciples
do not provide any indication that such a new type of historical
changes, radically different in nature from those of the preceding
ages of class struggles, could possibly come into being. What further
changes can be expected once the higher phase of communism is
attained, in which everybody gets all he needs? — The distinction
that Marx made between his own "scientific" socialism and the socialist
plans of older authors whom he branded as Utopians refers not only
to the nature and organization of the socialist commonwealth but
also to the way in which this commonwealth is supposed to come into
existence. Those whom Marx disparaged as Utopians constructed the
design of a socialist paradise and tried to convince people that its
realization is highly desirable. Marx rejected this procedure. He pre-
tended to have discovered the law of historical evolution according
to which the coming of socialism is inevitable. He saw the short-
comings of the Utopian socialists, their Utopian character, in the fact
that they expected the coming of socialism from the will of people,
i.e., their conscious action, while his own scientific socialism asserted
that socialism will come, independently of the will of men, by the
evolution of the material productive forces.

PRESENT-DAY TRENDS AND THE FUTURE 365

the phenomena of profit and loss, the economist con-
structs the image of a hypothetical, although unattain-
able, state of affairs in which production is always fully
adjusted to the realizable wishes of the consumers and
no further changes whatever occur. In this imaginary
world tomorrow does not differ from today, no mal-
adjustments can arise, and no need for any entrepre-
neurial action emerges. The conduct of business does
not require any initiative, it is a self-acting process un-
consciously performed by automatons impelled by mys-
terious quasi-instincts. There is for economists (and,
for that matter, also for laymen discussing economic
issues ), no other way to conceive what is going on in the
real, continually changing world than to contrast it in
this way with a fictitious world of stability and absence
of change. But the economists are fully aware that the
elaboration of this image of an evenly rotating economy
is merely a mental tool that has no counterpart in the
real world in which man lives and is called to act. They
did not even suspect that anybody could fail to grasp
the merely hypothetical and ancillary character of their
concept.

Yet some people misunderstood the meaning and sig-
nificance of this mental tool. In a metaphor borrowed
from the theory of mechanics, the mathematical econ-
omists call the evenly rotating economy the static state,
the conditions prevailing in it equilibrium, and any devi-
ation from equilibrium disequilibrium. This language
suggests that there is something vicious in the very fact
that there is always disequilibrium in the real economy
and that the state of equilibrium never becomes actual.

366 THE COURSE OF HISTORY

The merely imagined hypothetical state of undisturbed
equilibrium appears as the most desirable state of real-
ity. In this sense some authors call competition as it
prevails in the changing economy imperfect competi-
tion. The truth is that competition can exist only in a
changing economy. Its function is precisely to wipe out
disequilibrium and to generate a tendency toward the
attainment of equilibrium. There cannot be any compe-
tition in a state of static equilibrium because in such a
state there is no point at which a competitor could inter-
fere in order to perform something that satisfies the con-
sumers better than what is already performed anyway.
The very definition of equilibrium implies that there
is no maladjustment anywhere in the economic system,
and consequently no need for any action to wipe out
maladjustments, no entrepreneurial activity, no entre-
preneurial profits and losses. It is precisely the absence
of the profits that prompts mathematical economists
to consider the state of undisturbed static equilibrium as
the ideal state, for they are inspired by the preposses-
sion that entrepreneurs are useless parasites and profits
are unfair lucre.

The equilibrium enthusiasts are also deluded by am-
biguous thymological connotations of the term "equilib-
rium," which of course have no reference whatever to
the way in which economics employs the imaginary con-
struction of a state of equilibrium. The popular notion
of a man's mental equilibrium is vague and cannot be
particularized without including arbitrary judgments of
value. All that can be said about such a state of mental
or moral equilibrium is that it cannot prompt a man

PRESENT-DAY TRENDS AND THE FUTURE 367

toward any action. For action presupposes some uneasi-
ness felt, as its only aim can be the removal of uneasi-
ness. The analogy with the state of perfection is obvious.
The fully satisfied individual is purposeless, he does not
act, he has no incentive to think, he spends his days in
leisurely enjoyment of life. Whether such a fairy-like
existence is desirable may be left undecided. It is cer-
tain that living men can never attain such a state of
perfection and equilibrium. It is no less certain that,
sorely tried by the imperfections of real life, people will
dream of such a thorough fulfillment of all their wishes.
This explains the sources of the emotional praise of
equilibrium and condemnation of disequilibrium.

However, economists must not confuse this thymo-
logical notion of equilibrium with the use of the imagi-
nary construction of a static economy. The only service
that this imaginary construction renders is to set off in
sharp relief the ceaseless striving of living and acting
men after the best possible improvement of their condi-
tions. There is for the unaffected scientific observer
nothing objectionable in his description of disequilib-
rium. It is only the passionate pro-socialist zeal of math-
ematical pseudo-economists that transforms a purely
analytical tool of logical economics into an Utopian
image of the good and most desirable state of affairs.

4. The Alleged Unbroken Trend toward Progress

A realistic philosophical interpretation of history
must abstain from any reference to the chimerical notion
of a perfect state of human affairs. The only basis from

368 THE COURSE OF HISTORY

which a realistic interpretation can start is the fact that
man, like all other living beings, is driven by the impulse
to preserve his own existence and to remove, as far as
possible, any uneasiness he feels. It is from this point of
view that the immense majority of people appraise the
conditions under which they have to live. It would be
erroneous to scorn their attitude as materialism in the
ethical connotation of the term. The pursuit of all those
nobler aims which the moralists contrast with what they
disparage as merely materialistic satisfactions presup-
poses a certain degree of material well-being.

The controversy about the monogenetic or polyge-
netic origin of Homo sapiens is, as has been pointed out
above, 1 of little importance for history. Even if we as-
sume that all men are the descendants of one group of
primates, which alone evolved into the human species,
we have to take account of the fact that at a very early
date dispersion over the surface of the earth broke up
this original unity into more or less isolated parts. For
thousands of years each of these parts lived its own life
with little or no intercourse with other parts. It was
finally the development of the modern methods of
marketing and transportation that put an end to the
isolation of various groups of men.

To maintain that the evolution of mankind from its
original conditions to the present state followed a defi-
nite line is to distort historical fact. There was neither
uniformity nor continuity in the succession of historical
events. It is still less permissible to apply to historical
changes the terms growth and decay, progress and

1. See above, pp. 219 f.

PRESENT-DAY TRENDS AND THE FUTURE 369

retrogression, improvement and deterioration if the his-
torian or philosopher does not arbitrarily pretend to
know what the end of human endeavor ought to be.
There is no agreement among people on a standard by
which the achievements of civilization can be said to
be good or bad, better or worse.

Mankind is almost unanimous in its appraisal of the
material accomplishments of modern capitalistic civili-
zation. The immense majority considers the higher
standard of living which this civilization secures to the
average man highly desirable. It would be difficult to
discover, outside of the small and continually shrinking
group of consistent ascetics, people who do not wish
for themselves and their families and friends the enjoy-
ment of the material paraphernalia of Western capital-
ism. If, from this point of view, people assert that "we"
have progressed beyond the conditions of earlier ages,
their judgment of value agrees with that of the majority.
But if they assume that what they call progress is a
necessary phenomenon and that there prevails in the
course of events a law that makes progress in this sense
go on forever, they are badly mistaken.

To disprove this doctrine of an inherent tendency to-
ward progress that operates automatically, as it were,
there is no need to refer to those older civilizations in
which periods of material improvement were followed
by periods of material decay or by periods of standstill.
There is no reason whatever to assume that a law of
historical evolution operates necessarily toward the im-
provement of material conditions or that trends which
prevailed in the recent past will go on in the future too.

370 THE COURSE OF HISTORY

What is called economic progress is the effect of an
accumulation of capital goods exceeding the increase in
population. If this trend gives way to a standstill in the
further accumulation of capital or to capital decumula-
tion, there will no longer be progress in this sense of the
term.

Everyone but the most bigoted socialists agrees that
the unprecedented improvement in economic conditions
which has occurred in the last two hundred years is an
achievement of capitalism. It is, to say the least, pre-
mature to assume that the tendency toward progressive
economic improvement will continue under a different
economic organization of society. The champions of
socialism reject as ill-considered all that economics has
advanced to show that a socialist system, being unable
to establish any kind of economic calculation, would
entirely disintegrate the system of production. Even if
the socialists were right in their disregard for the eco-
nomic analysis of socialism, this would not yet prove
that the trend toward economic improvement will or
could go on under a socialist regima

5. The Suppression of "Economic" Freedom

A civilization is the product of a definite world view,
and its philosophy manifests itself in each of its accom-
plishments. The artifacts produced by men may be
called material. But the methods resorted to in the ar-
rangement of production activities are mental, the out-
come of ideas that determine what should be done and

PRESENT-DAY TRENDS AND THE FUTURE 371

how. All the branches of a civilization are animated by
the spirit that permeates its ideology.

The philosophy that is the characteristic mark of the
West and whose consistent elaboration has in the last
centuries transformed all social institutions has been
called individualism. It maintains that ideas, the good
ones as well as the bad, originate in the mind of an
individual man. Only a few men are endowed with the
capacity to conceive new ideas. But as political ideas can
work only if they are accepted by society, it rests with
the crowd of those who themselves are unable to de-
velop new ways of thinking to approve or disapprove
the innovations of the pioneers. There is no guarantee
that these masses of followers and routinists will make
wise use of the power vested in them. They may reject
the good ideas, those whose adoption would benefit
them, and espouse bad ideas that will seriously hurt
them. But if they choose what is worse, the fault is not
theirs alone. It is no less the fault of the pioneers of the
good causes in not having succeeded in bringing for-
ward their thoughts in a more convincing form. The
favorable evolution of human affairs depends ultimately
on the ability of the human race to beget not only
authors but also heralds and disseminators of beneficial
ideas.

One may lament the fact that the fate of mankind is
determined by the — certainly not infallible — minds of
men. But such regret cannot change reality. In fact,
the eminence of man is to be seen in his power to choose
between good and evil. It is precisely this that the theo-

372 THE COURSE OF HISTORY

logians had in view when they praised God for having
bestowed upon man the discretion to make his choice
between virtue and vice.

The dangers inherent in the masses' incompetence
are not eliminated by transferring the authority to make
ultimate decisions to the dictatorship of one or a few
men, however excellent. It is an illusion to expect that
despotism will always side with the good causes. It
is characteristic of despotism that it tries to curb the
endeavors of pioneers to improve the lot of their fellow
men. The foremost aim of despotic government is to
prevent any innovations that could endanger its own
supremacy. Its very nature pushes it toward extreme
conservatism, the tendency to retain what is, no matter
how desirable for the welfare of the people a change
might be. It is opposed to new ideas and to any spon-
taneity on the part of the subjects.

In the long run even the most despotic governments
with all their brutality and cruelty are no match for
ideas. Eventually the ideology that has won the support
of the majority will prevail and cut the ground from
under the tyrant's feet. Then the oppressed many will
rise in rebellion and overthrow their masters. However,
this may be slow to come about, and in the meantime
irreparable damage may have been inflicted upon the
common weal. In addition a revolution necessarily
means a violent disturbance of social cooperation,
produces irreconcilable rifts and hatreds among the
citizens, and may engender bitterness that even cen-
turies cannot entirely wipe out. The main excellence and
worth of what is called constitutional institutions, de-

PRESENT-DAY TRENDS AND THE FUTURE 373

mocracy and government by the people is to be seen in
the fact that they make possible peaceful change in the
methods and personnel of government. Where there is
representative government, no revolutions and civil
wars are required to remove an unpopular ruler and his
system. If the men in office and their methods of con-
ducting public affairs no longer please the majority of
the nation, they are replaced in the next election by
other men and another system.

In this way the philosophy of individualism demol-
ished the doctrine of absolutism, which ascribed heav-
enly dispensation to princes and tyrants. To the alleged
divine right of the anointed kings it opposed the inalien-
able rights bestowed upon man by his Creator. As
against the claim of the state to enforce orthodoxy and
to exterminate what it considered heresy, it proclaimed
freedom of conscience. Against the unyielding preser-
vation of old institutions become obnoxious with the
passing of time, it appealed to reason. Thus it inaugu-
rated an age of freedom and progress toward prosperity.

It did not occur to the liberal philosophers of the
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that a new
ideology would arise which would resolutely reject
all the principles of liberty and individualism and
would proclaim the total subjection of the individual to
the tutelage of a paternal authority as the most desirable
goal of political action, the most noble end of history and
the consummation of all the plans God had in view in
creating man. Not only Hume, Condorcet, and Ben-
tham but even Hegel and John Stuart Mill would have
refused to believe it if some of their contemporaries

374 THE COURSE OF HISTORY

had prophesied that in the twentieth century most of
the writers and scientists of France and the Anglo-Saxon
nations would wax enthusiastic about a system of gov-
ernment that eclipses all tyrannies of the past in pitiless
persecution of dissenters and in endeavors to deprive the
individual of all opportunity for spontaneous activity.
They would have considered that man a lunatic who
told them that the abolition of freedom, of all civil
rights, and of government based on the consent of the
governed would be called liberation. Yet all this has
happened.

The historian may understand and give thymological
explanations for this radical and sudden change in ideol-
ogy. But such an interpretation in no way disproves the
philosophers' and the economists' analysis and critique
of the counterfeit doctrines that engendered this move-
ment.

The key stone of Western civilization is the sphere
of spontaneous action it secures to the individual. There
have always been attempts to curb the individual's ini-
tiative, but the power of the persecutors and inquisitors
has not been absolute. It could not prevent the rise of
Greek philosophy and its Roman offshoot or the develop-
ment of modern science and philosophy. Driven by their
inborn genius, pioneers have accomplished their work
in spite of all hostility and opposition. The innovator
did not have to wait for invitation or order from any-
body. He could step forward of his own accord and defy
traditional teachings. In the orbit of ideas the West has
by and large always enjoyed the blessings of freedom.

PRESENT-DAY TRENDS AND THE FUTURE 375

Then came the emancipation of the individual in the
field of business, an achievement of that new branch of
philosophy, economics. A free hand was given to the
enterprising man who knew how to enrich his fellows
by improving the methods of production. A horn of
plenty was poured upon the common men by the capital-
istic business principle of mass production for the satis-
faction of the needs of the masses.

In order to appraise justly the effects of the Western
idea of freedom we must contrast the West with condi-
tions prevailing in those parts of the world that have
never grasped the meaning of freedom.

Some oriental peoples developed philosophy and
science long before the ancestors of the representatives
of modern Western civilization emerged from primitive
barbarism. There are good reasons to assume that Greek
astronomy and mathematics got their first impulse from
acquaintance with what had been accomplished in the
East. When later the Arabs acquired a knowledge of
Greek literature from the nations they had conquered,
a remarkable Muslim culture began to flourish in Persia,
Mesopotamia, and Spain. Up to the thirteenth century
Arabian learning was not inferior to the contemporary
achievements of the West. But then religious orthodoxy
enforced unswerving conformity and put an end to all
intellectual activity and independent thinking in the
Muslim countries, as had happened before in China, in
India, and in the orbit of Eastern Christianity. The
forces of orthodoxy and persecution of dissenters, on
the other hand, could not silence the voices of Western

376 THE COURSE OF HISTORY

science and philosophy, for the spirit of freedom and
individualism was already strong enough in the West
to survive all persecutions. From the thirteenth century
on all intellectual, political, and economic innovations
originated in the West. Until the East, a few decades
ago, was fructified by contact with the West, history in
recording the great names in philosophy, science, liter-
ature, technology, government, and business could
hardly mention any Orientals. There was stagnation
and rigid conservatism in the East until Western ideas
began to filter in. To the Orientals themselves slavery,
serfdom, untouchability, customs like sutteeism or the
crippling of the feet of girls, barbaric punishments, mass
misery, ignorance, superstition, and disregard of hy-
giene did not give any offence. Unable to grasp the
meaning of freedom and individualism, today they are
enraptured with the program of collectivism.

Although these facts are well known, millions today
enthusiastically support policies that aim at the substi-
tution of planning by an authority for autonomous plan-
ning by each individual. They are longing for slavery.

Of course, the champions of totalitarianism protest
that what they want to abolish is "only economic free-
dom" and that all "other freedoms" will remain un-
touched. But freedom is indivisible. The distinction be-
tween an economic sphere of human life and activity
and a noneconomic sphere is the worst of their fallacies.
If an omnipotent authority has the power to assign to
every individual the tasks he has to perform, nothing
that can be called freedom and autonomy is left to him.

PRESENT-DAY TRENDS AND THE FUTURE 377

He has only the choice between strict obedience and
death by starvation. 1

Committees of experts may be called to advise the
planning authority whether or not a young man should
be given the opportunity to prepare himself for and to
work in an intellectual or artistic field. But such an ar-
rangement can merely rear disciples committed to the
parrot-like repetition of the ideas of the preceding gen-
eration. It would bar innovators who disagree with the
accepted ways of thought. No innovation would ever
have been accomplished if its originator had been in
need of an authorization by those from whose doctrines
and methods he wanted to deviate. Hegel would not
have ordained Schopenhauer or Feuerbach, nor would
Professor Rau have ordained Marx or Carl Menger. If
the supreme planning board is ultimately to determine
which books are to be printed, who is to experiment in
the laboratories and who is to paint or to sculpture,
and which alterations in technological methods should
be undertaken, there will be neither improvement nor
progress. Individual man will become a pawn in the
hands of the rulers, who in their "social engineering"
will handle him as engineers handle the stuff of which
they construct buildings, bridges, and machines. In
every sphere of human activity an innovation is a chal-
lenge not only to all routinists and to the experts and
practitioners of traditional methods but even more to
those who have in the past themselves been innovators.

1. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (London, 1944), pp. 66 ff.; Mises,
Socialism, p. 589.

378 THE COURSE OF HISTORY

It meets at the beginning chiefly stubborn opposition.
Such obstacles can be overcome in a society where there
is economic freedom. They are insurmountable in a
socialist system.

The essence of an individual's freedom is the oppor-
tunity to deviate from traditional ways of thinking and
of doing things. Planning by an established authority
precludes planning on the part of individuals.

6. The Uncertainty of the Future

The outstanding fact about history is that it is a suc-
cession of events that nobody anticipated before they
occurred. What the most far-seeing statesmen and busi-
nessmen divine is at most conditions as they will de-
velop in the near future, in a period in which by and
large no radical changes in ideologies and in general
conditions will take place. The British and French
philosophers whose writings actuated the French Revo-
lution, and the thinkers and poets of all Western nations
who enthusiastically hailed the first steps in this great
transformation, foresaw neither the reign of terror nor
the way Babeuf and his followers would very soon
interpret the principle of equality. None of the econ-
omists whose theories demolished the precapitalistic
methods of restricting economic freedom and none of
the businessmen whose operations inaugurated the In-
dustrial Revolution anticipated either the unprecedented
achievements of free enterprise or the hostility with
which those most benefited by capitalism would react to
it. Those idealists who greeted as a panacea President

PRESENT-DAY TRENDS AND THE FUTURE 379

Wilson's policy of "making the world safe for democ-
racy" did not foresee what the effects would be.

The fallacy inherent in predicting the course of his-
tory is that the prophets assume no ideas will ever
possess the minds of men but those they themselves
already know of. Hegel, Comte, and Marx, to name only
the most popular of these soothsayers, never doubted
their own omniscience. Each was fully convinced that
he was the man whom the mysterious powers provi-
dently directing all human affairs had elected to con-
summate the evolution of historical change. Henceforth
nothing of importance could ever happen. There was
no longer any need for people to think. Only one task
was left to coming generations — to arrange all things
according to the precepts devised by the messenger of
Providence. In this regard there was no difference be-
tween Mohammed and Marx, between the inquisitors
and Auguste Comte.

Up to now in the West none of the apostles of stabili-
zation and petrification has succeeded in wiping out
the individual's innate disposition to think and to apply
to all problems the yardstick of reason. This alone, and
no more, history and philosophy can assert in dealing
with doctrines that claim to know exactly what the
future has in store for mankind.

Index

Adjustment, 245

"Agrarian Reformers" in China,

359 f.
Anchorites, 35, 37, 52
Anti-Christianism, 149 f.
A priori, 8 f.
Arabian learning, 375
Ascetics, 52
Atheism, 50 f.
Autarky, 234

Babeuf, F. N., 329, 378
Bagehot, Walter, 221
Bastiat, Frederic, 168 f.
Beethoven, 352
Behaviorism, 245, 327
Bentham, Jeremy, 67 f., 131 n.,

373
Bias, 26 ff., 33 f., 125 ff.
Big business, 119, 147, 237 f.
Bismarck, 144, 149
Bohm-Bawerk, Eugen von, 207
Bourgeoisie, 115, 129, 142 ff., 349
Brentano, Franz, 36 n., 83 n.
Breuer, Joseph, 152
Buckle, Thomas Henry, 84 ff.,

262
Bukharin, N., 349
Burckhardt, Jacob, 295

Carnot's second law of thermody-
namics, 211 ff.

Castes, 113 ff., 352

Causality, 74, 240

Chambord, Henri, count of, 348

Charcot, Jean Martin, 152

Choosing, 12 ff., 25

Christianity, 43 f., 171, 339

Civilization, spiritual and mate-
rial aspects of, 337

381

Civilizations, classification of,
220 ff.

Classes, conflict of, 112 ff.

Collectivism, 58 ff., 250 ff.

Collingwood, R. G., 308

Comparative cost, theory of, 29

Competition, biological, 38, 40

Comte, Auguste, 68, 170, 175 f.,
241, 262, 348, 379

Concentration of wealth, 118 f.

Condorcet, M. J. A., 376

Conflicts, 41 f., 297; of collec-
tives, 254 ff.

Constants, 10 f.

Continuity of economic evolu-
tion, 357

Costs, 209 f.

Croce, Benedetto, 308

Daniel, Book of, 170

Dante, 180, 294

Darwin, Charles, 171, 213

Darwinism, social, 39

Democracy, "people's," 350; and

revolution, 373
Despotism, 66, 372
Determinism, 2, 73 ff., 77, 177 ff.
Dialectics, 102 ff.
Dialects, 233 f.
Dilthey, Wilhelm, 200, 265, 308,

312
Division of labor, 235
Dualism, methodological, 1
Durkheim, fimile, 190, 242

Econometrics, 10 f.

Economists and judgments of

value, 29 f., 33 f .
Egalitarianism, 328

382

INDEX

Engels, Friedrich, 104 ff., 121,
148 f., 157, 185, 193 f., 218

Enlightenment, 171 ff.

Entralgo, Petro L., 154 n.

Environment, 159 f., 324

Environmentalism, 109 n., 324 ff.

Ethics, intuitive, 52 f., and capi-
talism, 341 ff.

Equality, 263; principle of, 351 ff.

Equilibrium, 365 ff.

Events, historical, 10 f.

Fabians, 144

Farms, size of the, 355 ff.

Fatalism, 78 ff.

Felibrige, 233 f .

Feudalism, 115 f., 351

Feuerbach, Ludwig, 13 n., 377

Fiction, 274 ff .

Final causes, 161, 240, 247, 284

Forces, material productive,
106 ff.

Franklin, Benjamin, 83

Freedom, 347 ff.; alleged negati-
vism of the concept of, 24

Free will, 76 ff., 82, 179 ff.

Freud, Sigmund, 27, 152 f., 268,
281

Friedmann, Hermann, 266 n.

Geist, 103

Gestalt, 223

Gestalt psychology, 253

Goebbels, Joseph, 249 n.

Gregoire, Henri, 291 n.

Happiness, 12 ff., 62, 215
Harmonists and antiharmonists,

40 ff.
Harmony of interests, 54 f.
Haupbnann, Gerhard, 361
Hayek, F. A., 377 n.
Hegel, 102 ff., 156, 165, 170, 175,

255, 348, 373, 377
Hegelianism, 255
Historians and judgments of

value, 21, 298 ff.
Historicism, 198 ff., 211, 285;

critique of capitalism, 217 ff.

History, 159 ff., 211, 274 ff.
Human Action, 3ff., 20; sciences

of, 92 ff.
Humanism, 293 ff.
Hume, David, 9, 66, 312, 373

Ideas, the role of, 187 f., 224 ff.
Ideology, Marxian sense of the

term, 122 ff.
Impoverishment, progressive,

116 f.
Indifference, 24
Individualism, 58, 340, 371
Individuality, 183, 188
Individuals, 185, 191
Induction, 9, 303
Instincts, 194 f.

Interests, 28, 30 ff., 133 ff., 236 ff.
Intolerance, 34
Introspection, 283, 312
Ireland, linguistic problems of,

230 ff.
Irrationality, 184, 267
Italy, 149

Jevons, William Stanley, 124
Justice, 51 ff., 345 f.

Kallen, Horace M., 47, 249
Kant, Immanuel, 62, 165, 352

Land ownership, 353 ff.
Laplace, Pierre Simon, 79
Lassalle, Ferdinand, 116 n., 149,

255
Law, natural, 44 ff .
Lenin, Nikolay, 133, 328, 331
Likelihood, 314
Linguistic changes, 227 ff.

Majorities, 65 ff., 132
Mandeville, Bernard de, 144.

166 ff.
Mannheim, Karl, 249 n.
Marx, Karl, 64, 121, 157 ff., 170,

175 ff., 377, 379; on the policy

of the labor unions, 137
Marxism, 26, 51, 102 ff., 329 f.;

and equal distribution of land

INDEX

ownership, 359; and foreordi-
nation, 80

Mass phenomena, 259 ff.

Materialism, 2, 75 f., 94 ff.; ethi-
cal, 57 f., 94, 150, 368; meta-
phors of, 94 ff.

Materialist interpretation of his-
tory, 150 ff.

May, Geoffrey, 299

Means and ends, 12 f., 280

Meliorism, 172, 221

Menger, Carl, 124, 377

Mercantilism, 30, 297

Metaphysics, 4

Middle Ages, alleged ethical con-
formity of the, 42 ff.

Militarism, 351

Mill, John Stuart, 67, 206 f., 348,
373

Miller, Alexander, 154 f .

Minorities, 67 f .

Miracles, 7

Mohammed, 79, 379

Montaigne, Michel de, 30

Myrdal, Gunnar, 205 ff.

Nationalism, aggressive, 296 ff.
Nationality, principle of, 231
Natural sciences, 90 f.
Neo-indeterminisrn, 88 f.
Neumann, John von, 86
Neurath, Otto, 243
New Deal, 144, 146
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 215, 222

Panphysicalism, 93, 243 ff.
Perfection, state of, 362 ff.
Periodalism, 201 f .
Philosophy of history, 162 ff., 323
Pius IX, Pope, 68
Poincare, Henri, 74 n.
Polylogism, 31 f., 123
"Popular Front," 350
Population, optimum size of, 41,

56
Positivism, 93, 241, 285; legal,

47 f.
Praxeology, 271
Prediction, 4 f ., 274, 303 ff .

383

"Present" economic conditions,
202

Privileges, 32 f., 237

Probability, 91, 314

Profits, 209 f., 366

Progress, 162, 167, 172, 174,
214 f., 295 f„ 367 ff.; economic,
370; technological, 358 f.

Proletariat, 115

Property, private, 329

Proudhon, Pierre Joseph, 111

Prussia, 149

Psychoanalysis, 152 ff., 266 ff.

Psychology, 264 ff.

Punishment, justification of, 83 f.

Quantum mechanics, 87
Quetelet, Adolphe, 84

Race, 160 f.

Racism, 41, 332 ff.

Rationalism, 269

Rationality, 183 f., 267

Rationalization, 280 ff.

Rau, Karl Heinrich, 377

Regularity, 5 ff.

Relativism, 215

Renaissance, 295

Revelation, 49 f .

Revolution, 115

Ricardo, David, 29, 125, 235

Rickert, Heinrich, 308

Robertson, John Mackinnon, 86

Rougier, Louis, 46 n.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 173, 329

Russell, Bertrand, 91 f.

Russia, 149

Santayana, George, 275 n.

Schopenhauer, Arthur, 377

Science, "Unified," 3, 243

Sciences, social, 256 ff.

Secularism, 337 ff.

Selection, natural, 213

Smith, Adam, 125, 144, 167 ff.,
235

Socialist ideas, "bourgeois" ori-
gin of, 121 f .

Society, 251 f .

384

INDEX

Sociology, 241 f., 285
Sombart, Werner, 238 f.
Sozialpolitik, German, 144
Spengler, Oswald, 222 ff.
Spiethoff, Arthur, 200 n.
Stage doctrines, 169 f.
Stalin, Joseph, 331
Statistics, 84 ff., 89, 260
Status society, 113 ff., 328, 352
Stein, Lorenz von, 143
Stephen, Leslie, 209
Strauss, Leo, 299 f .
Styles of economic activity, 204

Tarde, Gabriel, 261
Tawney, R. H., 238
Thermodynamics, 211 ff.
Thymology, 264 ff., 312 ff.
Tocqueville, Alexis de, 67
Toynbee, Arnold J., 222 ff.
Trends, 204, 330, 350, 367 ff.
Types, ideal, 191, 315; real, 316;
"ought," 317

Understanding, specific, of the
historical sciences, 191, 264 f.,
310 ff.

Utilitarianism, 12 n., 49 ff., 55 ff.,
340

Utopian writings, 196 f .

Valuational neutrality (Wertfrei-

hett), 26, 271, 298 ff.
Value, judgments of, 19 ff.
Values, absolute, 35 ff.; aesthetic,

61 f.
Variables, 10 ff.
Vico, Giovanni Battista, 222
Volksgeist, 190, 242

Wages, Iron Law of, 116 f.

Wagner, Richard, 57

Watson, John B., 246 f.

Weber, Max, 308

Wilson, President Woodrow,

378 f.
Windelband, Wilhelm, 308

Zola, fimile, 278 f .